Glory
by Eiruiel
Summary: Someone wakes up on the wrong side of the wrong bed... in the wrong body. Things are probably going to get worse. SI OC fic. / Chapter 9: In which things fall apart.
1. Age 5: Ninja

**Published: 6/26/2014**

**Edited: 6/29/2014 for typos and formatting issues.**

* * *

**Prologue: Age 5: Ninja  
**

_"I remember this part. They made me carry you up the stairs... I was stuck watching you the whole day while they were taking care of everyone else. You were such a little princess."_

_"Hey, stop it! Don't _tell_ them—I cut that part out for a reason!"_

_"That doesn't change the fact that it happened..."_

* * *

I would like to open this narrative with the declaration that it had never been my intention to kill the five-year-old girl whose body I now inhabit. This possession was totally and utterly out of my control. I do not know how this occurrence came to be and I have done nothing to abet its happening because I am not a baby killer.

That is all.

...

Well, no, it's really not. If that had been it, it wouldn't have been worth putting this all together. I want to accomplish more with this than just letting people know I don't murder children for fun. I have a story to tell.

But with all that said, you're probably wondering what I'm on about. What do you mean, "possession"? What was that about baby killing? Is there going to be context to the intentionally vague story summary at all?

Yes, there will be, don't worry. Though really, the summary is pretty self-explanatory: someone (me) woke up on the wrong (far left) side of a bed (futon, technically) that was not hers and found that she suddenly had the body of a stranger (the little girl). That part's easy to explain. What you really want, I think, is for me to tell you what happened after.

And I will. I'll tell you. This is a story that I want people to hear—_my_ story. The story of how I grew up, of how I lived and loved and lost. The story of how I learned what truly matters.

Now make yourselves comfortable and let me tell you about this girl...

* * *

Sunday, January 25th, years before the birth of Naruto Uzumaki. Everything started on that day, and in all honesty, I wouldn't have much problem labeling it as the most important day of my life.

That was the day I became Misuzu Namikaze.

Little Misuzu—or just Suzu, as she was usually addressed—was a parentless child of the clan Namikaze. She lived in a quasi-orphanage that most of her kinsmen simply referred to as the "House," a large traditional Japanese home located in the center of the Namikaze compound. This House was the residence of seventeen other orphaned children, whose ages ranged from three months to seventeen years, and was headed by the fearsome Reiko Namikaze and her husband Souhei.

(I call her fearsome because she's a career mother, and everyone knows mothers are forces not to be trifled with—ninja mothers especially.)

The House was crowded, but clean and well-funded. As far as orphans go, Suzu had it good: she was well-fed and well-cared for, had lovely parent figures, an abundance of playmates, and, most notably, a marvelously stable home life. Not something to sniff at, not when ninjas were involved.

When I first woke up in her body, it didn't really register right away. It's hard to describe what it felt like. That's the thing about switching bodies; you don't realize it. It just works—if all of a sudden it's yours and you're in it, there's no reason for it to feel foreign. It's just _you. _My limbs functioned just fine—no stumbling due to shorter legs—and I spoke the local language just as well as you would expect a five-year-old to. In fact, everything went so seamlessly that I didn't realize anything was off until I was already sitting at the breakfast table, surrounded by small blond children.

The first thing that came to my mind when I blinked and became aware of my surroundings was _Japanese_. Though all of the people around me—wow, this place was crowded—were blond-haired and blue-eyed, their facial features were very East Asian. Almost everyone had angled faces and narrow eyes. The house, too, fit the bill: the table we were sitting at was very low to the ground, we were all sitting on dark blue cushions, and the floor was a distinctive tatami mat. I could tell from where I was that the doors were the sliding kind, and there was a large banner hanging on the wall that was covered in symbols I couldn't read. Kanji, I knew intuitively. But I didn't actually know any yet, it seemed, except for the one that read "heaven" near the bottom.

"Food's ready!" a voice announced, snapping me out of my observations. A woman in an apron approached the table, balancing two trays covered in black lacquer dishes—also very Japanese—in her hands, followed by a man and a teenager carrying similar burdens. They handed the food to the girl at the opposite end of the table, who took a plate and passed the tray down. The process was repeated for the rest of the food, and when all was done I was staring a breakfast of fish, miso soup, rice, some miniature omelet things, and something I somehow knew was steamed bamboo shoots.

Oh, yeah. _Definitely_ Japanese.

There was a chorus of "itadakimasu" and then breakfast was underway. Everyone looked cheerful as they dug in, and I got the feeling that most meals here were chatty and relaxed rather than formal and quiet. I counted twenty people in total: two adults, three teenagers, four tweens, a whopping _seven_ toddlers, myself included, and four slobbery babies. Eyeing the woman and the man who looked to be her husband in disbelief, I wondered how it was possible for someone to live under the same roof with such an insane amount of prepubescence. And _four_ babies? I had had a new cousin a little while ago and just _one_ of him had been enough send the whole household batty. How the hell were these guys managing?

But manage they did. I watched, awed, as the couple inhaled their food in record time and set to feeding the infants even as they were diffusing an oncoming food fight and happily replying to the children's screaming chatter. _And _they were laughing and talking together the whole time as if they weren't drowning in a mass of attention-seeking minors. It was astounding.

Good Lord. Ninja parents.

...

I froze with my food halfway in my mouth. Wait a moment. Had I just thought—_ninja_ parents? Like, shuriken-throwing fire-breathing water-walking ninjas? I looked at them again.

They were a perfectly domestic pair. The woman's hair was bound in a messy bun, her face looked smooth and rather pretty, and she still had her apron on; the man was wearing a plain dark blue shirt and black pants. They didn't have crazy battle scars or anything, nor did they have tattoos: they looked like totally normal people to me. But no, there it was again—the very sight of them had my mind screaming _ninjas._

And then, just like that, I suddenly knew. They were ninja, this was a ninja clan, I was in a ninja village, and they were all from the story Naruto.

I must have scared them when I plunged face-first into my food in a dead faint.

* * *

**A/N: And now, after years of writing and revision and work, Glory's prologue is finally up. Thank God.**

**Originally I had planned to write the whole story at once and then publish chapters biweekly, but as long as I kept that mindset, things just kept getting pushed off and the story just kept mutating as I kept changing things. So then I decided enough was enough: this story's going up.**

**Anyway, this is my first serious work in a long, long time. I hope things go as well as I'd imagined them going.**

**(Disclaimer: because the chapters are not pre-written updates are going to be sporadic. I'm sorry. The muse comes and goes.)**

**On another note, the Self-Insert/OC genre has really exploded while I was gone from the site. It's kind of blindsiding! At least I don't have to worry about being the one odd SI story anymore...**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	2. Age 5: Meetings

**Published: 6/30/2014**

* * *

**Chapter 1: Beginnings**

"_Hey, this is the part where we meet, isn't it?"_

"_Yeah, it is. I'd never leave it out."_

"_...It'd be nice if he were still around to see it."_

"_...Yeah. It would."_

* * *

I'd had a lot of expectations when I first met Minato. He'd been my favorite character in all of Naruto, hands-down; not only was he an uber cool badass and a great ninja, he was a prodigy genius who was really friendly and polite to boot. He was responsible, too, and clever, and overall just a super awesome person.

Thing is, though, expectations don't always equate to reality. People are what they are, not what you think they should be. And Minato? Sure, he _was_ a badass genius ninja… sometimes. But no one is a totally flat character, and that means that the rest of the time he was a major, major dork.

"So I asked her, 'Why is _Super Ultimate Soaring Dual Dragons of Divine Water and Heavenly Lightning Strike of Power _no good?' But she just laughed at me!" Minato exclaimed, emotively thrusting his soapy washrag into his bucket. The subsequent splash achieved an impressive distance; I observed with careful detachment that the area around him was looking worse than it had when we'd started.

"I dunno," I replied, resisting the urge to bang my head on the floor as I began picking at a particularly stubborn spot of dirt.

Minato, who had been made to watch over me the whole day after my fainting spell, had asked only one thing of me in return for his kindness: that I help him with his chores. I had agreed immediately, feeling horrendously guilty that he had spent the entirety of the 25th—his _birthday—_sitting in a small room next to a knocked-out toddler. With that said, though, he wasn't angry or anything; in fact, he was actually rather pleased that I'd known it was his birthday at all. At the House, apparently, birthdays are almost always celebrated at least a week late.

"And I was so looking forward to showing it off at the Academy's ninjutsu exhibition, too," the future Yondaime sighed ruefully, half-heartedly swishing water around the floorboards. It was astonishing how much of a lazy teenager he looked like just then.

"Why don't you just change it a bit?" I asked, picking up my own bucket and nudging him over, knowing that a speedy intervention was going to be needed if I wanted to save the sitting room floor from drowning. "Like… I don't know, make it _Divine Dual Dragons_ or something like that."

"Alliterative," Minato noted appreciatively as he scooted to the side. "But you don't think Kushina will laugh at that?"

"I think it'll be okay," I replied, just a smidge dryly. It suddenly occurred to me that I was technically older than Minato, who had just turned sixteen. "Besides, it's the effectiveness of the jutsu that counts, not the name, right?"

"Yeah," my cousin laughed a bit sheepishly, rubbing his neck, "I guess it is. Huh…" He paused a moment before turning to look at me. "Have you always been this clever, Suzu-chan?"

There was suddenly an alarming amount of sharpness in his gaze.

"Uh," I gulped, taken aback at his unexpectedly intense scrutiny; I decided now was a good time to give the floor a nice, vigorous scrub. "I-I guess..."

"Hmm," Minato murmured pensively, sitting back on his haunches and examining me at me with a scarily analytical eye.

I held back a cringe. Oh, I see how it is. He's only crazy smart when circumstances are _against _you. It figured.

"Hey, you two! Are you done yet?" came Auntie Reiko's distant call, interrupting my exasperation. "You've been in there the whole afternoon! If you're not finished by the time everyone else gets back…"

"Eek," I said, deciding that a cringe wasn't so inappropriate now.

"Let's get going," Minato shuddered, getting back on his knees and beginning to clean in fevered earnest. "I want to live to see dinner."

"Ditto," I agreed.

* * *

So that was how I made friends with my cousin, Minato Namikaze. Minato, like everyone else at the House, was an orphan: his parents had died on a mission when he had been two. At age sixteen, he was not only the beloved big brother of the many House children, but the pride of the clan—he was the youngest Jounin in the history of the Namikaze.

The Namikaze, as I gathered, were a very minor ninja clan that put out competent but mostly average shinobi. Unlike the noble clans like the Hyuga or the Aburame, or even regular clans like the Nara, we had no particular specialization; our people just did whatever they were best at. We weren't particularly inclined to ninjutsu or genjutsu, either, so our hereditary chakra reserves were only slightly larger than normal.

Oh, but we did have our own taijutsu style: Hurricane Gale. The first clan head had devised it because Namikazes tended to be skinny like toothpicks and were naturally disadvantaged in hand-to-hand combat; its main focus was drawing power from the lower body, redirecting and using opponents' energy against them, and moving in circles. If properly executed, it was, apparently, very effective against multiple opponents, and could be used for extended periods of time due to its lack of need for brute strength.

At least, that's what I was told. Information like this was constantly being dumped on me nowadays because it seemed that I was due to start at the Academy this April. The week of my arrival had actually been the first week of my lessons with Auntie Reiko, who was in charge of educating the House's children in the clan arts.

(My God, was there nothing that woman could do? She was the ultimate supermom.)

For the most part, though, my days were rather peaceful, full of games and family and regular five-year-old stuff. Kids here had a shocking amount of freedom; as long as our daily chores were completed, House rules allowed us to go out into the village on our own whenever we wanted, so long as we returned home before dinner.

Was that an effect of being from a ninja clan, or was that just the tone of Konoha in general? I couldn't tell. It had been just two days after I'd gotten here and it felt like I'd been a citizen of the village all my life… not that that was a bad thing. In fact, I rather enjoyed myself. A second childhood was something I knew people would kill to have, and it was easy to see why. That sort of carefree life where your only concerns were to eat, sleep, and play… you couldn't appreciate it until it was over.

In that vein, three months passed in a flash. Before I knew it I was in an Academy classroom, being assigned a seat. First-year students, it seemed, weren't allowed to pick their own seats, and were placed in alphabetical order.

The Academy didn't look like it had changed much between now and Naruto's time. The classrooms were large and lecture hall-styled, with a podium for the teacher to speak at at the bottom. The floors were hardwood and the doors slid; the windows were the latched kind that rotated outwards. For a ninja school, things were surprisingly colorful: there were several posters and pictures on the walls displaying different rules and ninja platitudes.

I suppose here is where I should go into all the different people I met and how special they were, but I won't. There weren't any particularly inspiring teachers or cool senpai for me to talk about, anyway. As far as I was concerned, only two people I met in the Academy really mattered: Akihiko Namikaze and Yoshiya Miyazawa.

I'd met the former of the two by virtue of being seated next to him. Nothing fostered friendship like consistent casual contact, after all, and honestly? It would have been harder to _not _be his friend. Akihiko was incredibly amiable and had no trouble inviting me to do things like play games or eat lunch with him; by time the first week was over, we were bonafide buddies. Yoshiya, being Akihiko's best friend, quickly became mine by extension.

Akihiko was—obviously—a clansman of mine. He dressed in blindingly bright red and was quite loud, which made me wonder how I'd ever missed him, considering the fact that we lived in the same few acres of village space. He had the standard Namikaze coloring and stature—that is, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and twig-like—and his hair, which was gravity-defying, spike-forming, and somewhat left-leaning, marked him as a member of the wind branch.

(The Namikaze clan didn't have a hierarchy or anything, but there _were _two branches: the wave and wind branches. People from the wave branch—my branch—were typically water-natured and straight-haired. The wind branch—the one that both Akihiko and Minato were from—usually produced spikey-headed wind users. Of course, with that said, there were exceptions to each of those generalizations; chakra natures and hair types bled over all the time.)

Yoshiya was not from a clan, but his father was a second generation ninja, so he had some training. He was positively plain by comparison to his best friend; his dress sense was already low-key—he usually wore earthen colors—and that, in combination with his dark brown hair and murky green eyes, made his appearance utterly unremarkable. He was horribly shy and quiet, too, and hated drawing attention to himself.

I guess opposites really do attract. Even their talents were in sharp contrast: where Akihiko had already begun training in the fourth (!) level of Hurricane Gale, it was apparent Yoshiya was a blooming ninjutsu prodigy—he had already been spitting out mud balls for fun by the time I'd met him.

Honestly, they both had me outclassed from the very start. Yoshiya was ten times smarter than I had been at this age, and Akihiko was insanely athletic. I mean, after all, he was on the _fourth _level of Hurricane Gale—he was essentially a toddler with an orange belt.

What was with the Narutoverse and incredibly precocious children? Back home kids like these were so rare you could hardly believe they existed at all, but here it was like everyone and his mom was a prodigy. Something about ninja society must encourage a drastically early maturation, I mused as the teacher got up and dismissed us for lunch.

"Let's play ninja!" Akihiko all but screamed as soon as our Chuunin sensei left; there was an immediate—and chaotic—mass exodus out to the playground, where a crowd of children promptly gathered around, clapping and cheering.

Well. Maybe not _too _mature, though.

We were split into two teams to play nukenin and oinin, the ninja equivalent of cops and robbers. Each player produced his own set of cardstock shuriken, and those of us from ninja clans had a wooden kunai or two to arm ourselves with. Bendy-straws were taken from juice boxes to be assembled into headset mics for hunter-nin usage; a packet of post-its were liberated from the teacher's desk and rationed out as explosive tags, two per person. The area under monkey bars was designated as village T&I.

The rules were as follows: three jailbreaks per person. Only three uses of ninjutsu were allowed in a game. If you took any injuries to the legs, you had to walk until you healed. You could only take five hits from the shuriken before you were dead; if you were stabbed in the neck, chest, or stomach with a kunai, you were dead; if you used a fourth ninjutsu, you were dead; if you were stuck in T&I for longer than two minutes, you were also dead.

Predictably, the game ended when all members of a single team were dead.

(Here I make a clever comment about being dead and the games of ninja children.)

Akihiko and I ended up being comrades in defection, but Yoshiya was on the other team, which honestly did not bode well for any of the nukenin. The hunter-nin knew this and immediately designated him as mission control, well aware of his strategic brilliance.

"Missing-nin have one minute to hide!" the jailer announced.

The other kids dutifully covered their eyes. Akihiko took off, clutching his kunai in one hand, dragging me behind him with the other. We ran past a couple of kids who were ducking behind the slides, heading straight for the tree with the swing.

"Hold that!" Akihiko ordered once we reached it, releasing my hand and pointing at the wooden board swaying gently in the breeze.

I went over and kept it from flopping around; he wasted no time in jumping on it and scrambling up the rope like a monkey. After that, with a ridiculous amount of upper body strength that no young child should have, he hauled the seat up while I was still on it so I could reach the lowest branch. When I made it onto the same bough as him, he tossed it back down before motioning for me to climb higher. I followed him easily into the tree's obscuring heights.

Playground safety? Pshaw. This was the Hidden Leaf Village—kids were _born _climbing trees.

"Ready or not, here we come!" came the collective shout of our opponents.

Yoshiya immediately sprung into gear, green eyes bright, head whirring with plans and possibilities.

"Watanabe and Kamiya, you guys go check the playground!" our friend began, thrusting a finger to his left. "Ota, go with them! Everyone else, come here, I have a plan…"

As some secret course of action was whispered into our classmates' ears, Akihiko tensed.

"If they find us, you go to that branch over there," he told me quietly, pointing over his shoulder at a particularly long limb. "You can cross over to the Academy roof and then jump from the awning."

"What are you gonna do?" I asked, maintaining the hushed tone, going one branch up so I could climb over him.

"I'll drop down and fight them," he declared, flashing his kunai with a brawny grin. "You can be a surprise attack if I need it."

I almost protested the idea of turning to a fight first thing—running was much more in my nature—but then I stopped and considered it. It was just a game, after all. What could he possibly do?

But the answer, disturbingly enough, was _quite a bit_. Akihiko was trained in martial arts, after all, and hadn't he just shown me he was strong enough to lift me ease? He could beat the crap out of our classmates if he wanted to. I felt a sudden shudder crawl over my skin, and the thought came to me unbidden: _child soldiers, even on the playground. _

I froze. For a moment, my gaze was taken over by a horrible vision of my classmates savagely brawling to the death, stabbing each other as bloody red mist settled in the background…

"Suzu?" Akihiko asked, peering up at me curiously.

"Huh?" I snapped out of my daze, coming back to the feel of the warm Fire Country sun dancing across my cheeks. A pleasant breeze blew through my bangs, rustling my clothes as the leaves around us fluttered.

...That had been vivid. _Way _too vivid. And… way too easily imagined.

"You okay?" my friend queried, pulling himself out of his crouch so we were face-to-face. His round cheeks were flushed a pleasant pink, blue eyes round and inquisitive. I suddenly felt sick.

"Yeah," I muttered, reaching up for another branch and pulling myself away.

Playing ninja wasn't as fun as usual that day.

* * *

That afternoon, instead of heading straight home to play with my cousins at the House as I usually did, I went walking in Konoha.

As I looked around, taking in my surroundings, I noticed one thing: everyone was smiling and happy, cheerfully going about their daily business. There were women in pretty yukatas with baskets on their arms, shopping and hunting for bargains... men in sweaty white shirts, laughing at some crude joke while hauling a cart of lumber behind them… ninjas in flak jackets sipping tea at the teahouses, chatting idly as they shared stories and caught up one another. Everything was superbly peaceful.

These people had built their entire lives on the innocence of thousands. They _required_ children to go out and sully themselves, forcing them into the military and making them become soldiers, hiding reality with pretty tales of honor and glory. And _no one was bothered_.

What was _wrong_ with this place?

"Ouch!" I exclaimed as my forehead smashed into something hard, thoroughly derailing my troubled train of thought and sending me flying back onto my butt. _Well_, I thought dizzily, _that's what you get for not paying attention_...

"Whoa!" a voice exclaimed. I looked up reflexively and found myself staring up into a pair of hazel eyes, framed by dark brown lashes. I stared; they were old eyes, hinting faintly of a repressed sorrow, piercing and bold but fragile at the same time...

"You okay, kid?" a pair of fingers snapped in front of my face, snapping me out of my fascinated stupor. A young man was squatting in front of me, dressed in a commoner's garb, a straw hat sitting slightly askew atop his brown hair. A short ponytail flopped over his shoulder when he offered his hand.

"You need watch where you're going," he told me with a slight frown, pulling me to my feet and setting down his burden, a brown crate full of fruit.

I looked at him dumbly.

"Kid," he peered down at me, looking faintly concerned at my lack of response, "you're bleeding…"

I blinked and touched my forehead; sure enough, my hand came away sticky and red. The man clicked his tongue with grimace.

"Eech, I hope that looks worse than it actually is," he told me, bending down to get a closer look at the wound before straightening up and turning toward the store he'd just exited. "Stay there, I'll go grab some gauze…"

A minute passed before he was back with a white square and a roll of medical tape; he gently wiped the blood off my head with a wet cloth before carefully fixing the dressing on it.

"All better," he grinned, clapping my shoulder after he had placed the tape and cloth behind the fold of his shirt. "You should be good to go, though make sure you tell your parents what happened. They might want to take you to a doctor."

Wow, this person... was really nice. Going to all the trouble of cleaning and dressing the wound of some random kid? Not many people would do that. I broke into a smile and opened my mouth to thank him.

"Mister, nobody cares we're training to be child soldiers," I informed.

He stared.

...Okay, maybe I did need a doctor, because that was _not_ what I meant to tell him. Ugh, I mentally smacked myself, you moron! All you needed to do was give him a simple "thank you," and what do you do?

"Uh," the man said, looking at me like I'd grown another head.

I felt my face flush bright red. Oh, Lord, why was I such a weirdo? Maybe I'll just run…

"...You wanna come in?" he asked just as I'd lifted my feet to start sprinting. He pointed to the shop. "I'll make some tea."

And that was how I ended up sharing tea and dango in a fruit store with a stranger I met at the shopping district.

"My name's Itsuki Mikawaya," he told me, pulling his hat off and settling behind the counter with a stick of dumplings. "What's yours?"

"Suzu Namikaze," I replied, swinging my feet. He'd given me a stool to sit on.

"Well then, Suzu-chan," Itsuki began, eyebrows rising, "what was that about child soldiers?"

I blushed, feeling my shoulders hunch in embarrassment.

"Er, well…" I mumbled. "It's just, um, you know… I'm a little kid training to kill people and no one thinks it's weird."

Itsuki stared at me again, taking a long sip of tea to hide his expression. I fidgeted, resisting the urge to find something to hide behind.

"...That's a surprisingly civilian thing for a clan kid to say," the brunet finally replied, setting his drink down and giving me a scrutinizing look. "You're pretty observant for a kid."

"Uh… Konohagakure, get your prodigies a dime a dozen?" I offered as humorously as I could, smiling nervously.

He just looked confused again.

"What's a dime?" he asked.

I resisted the urge to slap myself. There _had_ to be a limit to one's own idiocy, but it seemed mine was still way up there...

"Never mind," I mumbled, just about ready to die of mortification. "I… have a weird sense of humor."

"...Right," Itsuki said slowly, eyebrows nearly at his hairline.

I buried my face in my hands. There was a moment of silence. Then...

"Does it bother you?" Itsuki asked.

I looked up.

"Eh?" was my eloquent response.

"Does it bother you that no one cares?" he clarified, making a circular motion with his free hand, as though he was encompassing the village and all of the people in it with a gesture.

"Of course it does," I replied, incredulous. Why else would I have been distracted enough to ram my face into a wooden crate? "Kids go out and kill for the village all the time, and everyone's just happy to leave things the way they are. How could I not be bothered?"

Itsuki looked thoughtful now. Sympathetic, even.

"Do you know what things were like before the Hidden Villages?" he asked me, crossing his arms and settling his chin on them.

"Um..." I paused. Madara and Hashirama came to mind, but I had a feeling that their story wasn't common knowledge.

"Things were pretty much the same as they are today," Itsuki informed, taking my hesitation for an admittance of ignorance. "Fighting, conflict… kids right in the middle of it, killing and getting killed. For no good reason, too—half of the fights were just clans feuding."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" I wondered, not sure what to make of his impromptu history lesson.

Itsuki let out a short laugh.

"In a way," he said, smiling with black humor. "Because you know, Suzu-chan, they died without a purpose. Their deaths did nothing but add fuel to the fire, provoking more conflict, leading to more death…" His gaze unfocused a bit before he shook his head. "But today, when our children fight, they do more than just defeat enemies."

I put my elbow on my thigh and propped my chin up, frowning.

"I don't follow," I confessed.

"When you were looking around the village, what did you see?" he asked. I opened my mouth to ask how he'd known what I'd been doing, but he rolled his eyes and cut me off, saying, "Yes, it was that obvious you were people-watching, you don't need to ask."

I huffed. How rude. Still, he was hearing me out, so I answered.

"They were all just doing regular stuff," I told him. "Shopping, working, eating… happily, too."

"Exactly," Itsuki nodded sharply at that. "Happily. When the village children fight, they fight for the happiness of others—it's not over a grudge or anything. They're fighting for the sake of thousands of lives, so that other people can continue to be happy."

I stared.

"Maybe that doesn't justify it," Itsuki shrugged uncomfortably, looking a bit put off at my silence but willing to argue his point all the same. "But the village doesn't train children to be ninja for greed or for gain."

"Just for the happiness of others," I said, feeling strange.

"It's what they have to do," he confirmed solemnly. "As long as people are alive, they'll have to defend themselves. Age doesn't matter. If they don't do it now, it'll be worse when they're older… we all fight eventually."

I'm having culture shock, I realized. Here, "child soldier" held no connotation of kidnapping or forced labor or slavery. Children are people and people fight to defend what they cared about. That was the way of the Naruto world. That's how things had always been. They wouldn't be disturbed about this, not the way that I was. For them, things had never been different.

"How did you know all of that, mister?" I asked softly, wondering where in the world a simple shopkeeper had divined such wisdom.

"I used to be a ninja," Itsuki shrugged once more, waving a hand dismissively. "I'm retired, though. Nasty business."

"Retired?" I repeated, incredulous. He didn't look a day over twenty-five. "How old _are _you?"

"Nineteen," he replied, matter-of-factly.

...

I… _what? _I looked at him, horrified. The was no way a nineteen-year-old should have eyes like his.

"Geez, kid, it's not that old," Itsuki frowned, completely misplacing the source of my shock. "Trust me, you'll be nineteen someday too."

"I… what happened?" I asked numbly, not entirely sure I even wanted to know. What in the world could force someone in the prime of their life into retirement? It didn't matter much, though, because Itsuki didn't want to share.

"Wow, it's getting dark out," he exclaimed, ignoring my query completely and going to stand by the storefront. "You'd better get home. Your parents will worry."

"I…" torn between finding out what happened and the very real concern of getting home on time, I looked helplessly at him.

There was a beat of silence.

"Oh, _fine_," Itsuki slouched, rubbing his neck with a sigh. "Come by again and we'll talk some more. I'll tell you about how I was a ninja, so run along before you get in trouble."

"Really?" I asked, jumping to my feet and shooting over to him. Itsuki ruffled my hair, looking a mix between irritated and resigned.

"Yeah, really," he affirmed. "I'll see you later. Go on." He pushed me forward, till I was standing in the street.

"Thank you, Itsuki-san!" I exclaimed as he went back inside, bending at the waist in a deep bow. The brunet just waved a hand, giving me a look that clearly said _go on, git_.

I raced home in the wake of the setting sun, mind buzzing.

* * *

**A/N: EDIT: I said Hurricane Gale was based off of aikido, but I suppose in actuality it's closer to aiki-jujustu... aikido is probably too defensive to base a proper ninja fighting style off of. Ninjas are all about killing each other, after all. But then again, Hurricane Gale is fictional. I suppose instead of saying "based off of" I'll say "inspired."**

**I had fun with the props the kids made for playing ninja. Bendy-straw headsets just shot into my head out of nowhere, and then I just ****_had _****to include it.**

**On another note, for those of you who watch the show subbed and can speak Japanese—can someone tell me what pronoun Minato actually uses? I mean, I understand he'll be switching between watashi and whatever it is he uses depending on the formality of the situation, but I noticed that when he's just talking to his friends and his team, he flip flops between ore and boku. **

**Do you think ore is his default and that he just switches to boku when he wants to be more friendly? Like, he used ore in Kakashi gaiden, but during Team Minato's bell test, he used boku… so was he using boku with his new students so not as to scare them, and once they got to know him better, switched back to ore? I know that some people consider the use of ore kind of arrogant, so I think it could be intimidating. But by no means am I fluent in Japanese, and the nuances of the language are quite mysterious at times.**

**(I know he also used boku as a kid, but many young boys do, and there's plenty of time for that to have changed.)**

**What do you guys think?**

**Cheers, **

**Eiruiel**


	3. Age 5: Discoveries

**Published: 7/8/2014**

* * *

**Chapter 2: Discoveries**

"_You… probably had the most functional family I've ever come across."_

"_...Is it bad that I think that's probably true? It's a wonder Konoha hasn't imploded with all of these repressed familial issues."_

* * *

I had never been the athletic type, but everyone knows adrenaline makes you run faster, and nothing gets adrenaline going like the threat of imminent destruction. I sprinted the road home like a track star, courtesy of the epinephrine, absolutely determined to reach the House before the sky blackened completely. Just the thought of pissing Auntie Reiko off was enough to double my speed.

I know by now a lot of you might be thinking Auntie Reiko is a crazy tyrant. Kids at the House frequently shudder and think of death threats when the subject of her displeasure comes up, after all. But just let me remind you, we _are _children—even Minato—and a certain amount of exaggeration exists when it comes to the prowess of our parents, even in our heads. Don't take us _too _seriously. Auntie Reiko would never lift a finger against us in anger. In fact, she had a strict policy of spanking that left only ages two to four open to corporal punishment. If you start too early, she'd later tell me, spanking is only pointless violence; kids are still too young to correlate their actions as the cause of physical punishment at that point. Past the age of four, she abandoned physical discipline completely in favor of punishments such as extra chores or losing privileges.

Luckily, I was five and no longer eligible for spanking. I _was_,however, in dire danger of losing a good chunk of my daytime freedom, which was something I did _not_ want happening right now. Itsuki and I had a lot of talking to do, and there was no way I'd get that done if I was chained at home on House arrest.

The last rays of sunlight were withdrawing when I finally burst into the House's genkan, gasping like a fish out of water. One of my cousins, who had been crouching to pick up his sandals, was forced to jump up and stick a hand to the ceiling to avoid getting barrelled into.

"Hah… hah…" I wheezed, chest heaving as I fell gracelessly onto my butt. Oh, Lord, I never want to run like that again.

"Oh, you made it," Minato observed, hanging over me with one hand splayed against the dark wood of the ceiling.

"Uh… wow," I managed between gulps of air, staring up at him. He looked back down curiously, completely blasé about the fact that he was currently defying gravity.

"You okay?" he asked, still holding his shoes in his other hand, bare feet swinging in the air above me. "They were just about to send me out to look for you. You were this close to getting in trouble," he informed, putting the sandals under his arm and holding his thumb and forefinger less than a centimeter apart.

Dumbfounded by his casual insubordination to the laws of physics, all I could do in response was point at his hand and ask, "Doesn't that hurt?"

It certainly looked painful. All of his weight was hanging from his wrist, and it was bent at a ninety degree angle that really didn't seem natural.

"I'm reinforcing it with chakra, so I'm fine," he assured me with a smile. "Though with that said, it _is_ kind of uncomfortable…"

I immediately scooted to the left. Minato dropped and landed lightly on his feet, so softly that he didn't make a sound. I let out an involuntary "ooh."

"You'll learn how to do that when you're older," he told me amusedly, replacing his sandals in his cubbyhole—there was one for each of us nailed to the wall, mine was the second to last one on the bottom left—before picking me up and putting me on my feet. "Where were you? Uncle Souhei said you didn't come home after classes let out."

"I was exploring," I explained, pulling my own sandals off and putting them away. "And then I made friends with a shopkeeper and we ate dango and had tea together. He was really nice. I'm going to talk to him again tomorrow."

"Does that have anything to do with this thing?" Minato asked shrewdly, pointing at my forehead.

I frowned. What thi—?

Oh. I felt my face flame up at the realization I still had huge white square tacked onto my face. I'd completely forgotten about it.

"I might have met him by crashing into one of his boxes," I mumbled, looking down and fisting my hands in my shirt. Minato made a snorting noise, hand coming up to cover his mouth; I scowled at him.

"Sorry," he murmured, smothering a chortle.

"Do you think I need to see a doctor?" I asked sulkily. Yeah, Yondy, go ahead. Laugh it up. "I went kind of wonky for a second after that."

"What's this about a doctor?" Auntie Reiko asked, popping up around the corner and making me jump. "Oh, Suzu, _there_ you are. What happened to your face?"

"I smashed into a crate," I said as I did _not_ immediately begin inching behind Minato's leg. Hiding? Me? I'm not trying to hide.

Auntie Reiko looked distinctly unimpressed.

"Don't cut so close to curfew again," she warned, shaking the wooden spoon she was holding at me. "I'll let you off this time, but don't make it a habit."

"Yes, ma'am," I squeaked, _not_ reflexively clutching the hem of Minato's shirt in terror. My cousin looked down at me indulgently, mirth shining in his eyes.

"Fine. You should have your uncle take a look at that," the House matriarch advised before withdrawing. "He's in the living room."

Minato and I shared a look as she left. He raised an eyebrow.

"Please don't," I muttered.

Minato laughed and ruffled my hair before turning toward the stairs. We parted ways, me to go find Uncle Souhei, him to go do whatever in his room before dinner.

I felt a flare of envy at the thought of _his room_. While the House certainly was big—there were nine bedrooms—it was impossible for each of us to have a space to ourselves. Though the three oldest adolescents got to have their own rooms—which was honestly probably for the best, they _were_ teenagers—that meant everyone else had to share. As a result, I had three roommates. Three very young and very _hyper_ roommates.

Some nights I found I couldn't remember silence actually sounded like anymore.

"Ojisan," I called, shaking thoughts of my nightly trials away and peering into the sitting room.

Sure enough, he was there, sinking into the sofa with glasses on his nose and a scroll in his hands. Souhei Namikaze, as I'd quickly learned, was quite different from his super-active everywhere-at-once wife. In contrast to Auntie Reiko, who was more physical and in charge of training us in taijutsu and the sorts, he took care of more intellectual matters. He preferred to sit and read and take things easy.

(He was also the one you went to if you wanted money—he was far less stingy than Auntie.)

"C'mere, I'll look at it," he grunted, sitting up and rerolling whatever it was he was looking at. I went over and climbed up onto the couch next to him, where he easily peeled off the gauze and uncovered the gash I'd carved into my skin.

"What did you do?" he asked, hands—much to my surprise—lighting up with green chakra. Uncle Souhei was a medic-nin? No one had ever told me that.

"I walked into a shopkeeper while he was moving crates," I explained for the third time that evening. "He said I should tell my parents because I might need to see a doctor."

"Concussion?" Uncle Souhei muttered, producing a pen light out of nowhere and shining it into my eyes. I felt a sharp spike of annoyance at being unexpectedly blinded.

As he poked and prodded me, checking my gaze and tapping my knees and running some sort of diagnostic jutsu on my head, I wondered what kind of lives the House's caretakers had been living before they'd decided to start raising orphans. I knew that Auntie Reiko had been a Chuunin, once upon a time, and I also now knew that Uncle Souhei had received some measure of training in iryou-ninjutsu—which hinted at other hidden skills, if simply for the fact that being a medic was _damn_ hard—so they obviously had been career ninja at some point, but what had happened? Why did they stop?

"You're fine, as far as I can tell," Uncle Souhei finally announced, closing up the gash with a sweep of his hand and sitting back. "You probably just _went wonky_ afterwards due to shock."

I felt my ears turn pink. "You heard that?" I asked weakly. Oh, God, I was never going to live this day down, was I?

Uncle Souhei shrugged.

"You were right there in the hall," he said, jerking his thumb at the wall that connected the sitting room to the genkan. "What kind of ninja household would this be if we couldn't hear you through a few inches of wood?"

I put my head in my hands and tried not to melt into a puddle of embarrassed goo.

* * *

A few days later, breakfast had just ended when someone came knocking on the House's front door. Curious, everyone stopped in the dish washing-drying-stacking assembly line as Auntie Reiko left to answer it. I went and stood at the hallway entryway, watching curiously.

"Akihiko?" I blinked as my friend was revealed, standing on the doorstep with a blinding grin. He waved at me before looking up at Auntie.

"Good morning, obasan," he greeted pleasantly, which was kind of surprising. I didn't think he'd have proper keigo. He had always struck me as too Naruto-like for that.

"Good morning," Auntie returned with a smile, always delighted to encounter children, before glancing back at me. "Are you a friend of Suzu's?"

"Yup!" my red-clad classmate confirmed with double thumbs up and a wide smile. His teeth didn't go _shhhing, _but I wondered distantly if the Nice Guy pose had been invented yet all the same. "I was wondering if we could walk to the Academy together."

Several of my cousins laughed and whistled delightedly at this, nudging me with teasing smiles and winks. I flushed but looked to Uncle Souhei for permission. He shrugged at looked at his wife.

"We're about done here anyway," Auntie Reiko nodded at me. I immediately jumped down from my stool and went over to my schoolmate, released from my dish-drying duties.

"You have a lot of brothers and sisters," Akihiko commented as I put my shoes on. "Did your mom have lots of twins or something?"

"That's not my mom. We're all orphans," I added, wondering if he seriously thought a tiny woman like Reiko Namikaze had delivered all seventeen of us. Then again, he _was _five, so what did he know? "She's not old enough to be mother to half of us, either."

"Ohh," Akihiko nodded knowingly as I waved at my snickering family members and shut the door. "So you're all adopted, then."

"I—" I opened my mouth to try and explain the concept of "orphan" to him, but then shut it and just quit while I was ahead. "Yes, Akihiko. We're all adopted."

"I kind of wish I had a little brother," he confided as we set off. The Academy was only about a fifteen minute walk, so we could afford to go slowly, especially since he had come surprisingly early. "Or a little sister! She'd have to call me niichan," he giggled, looking immensely pleased at the prospect.

"Why don't you ask your mom for one?" I suggested. He was a young kid, so it probably wouldn't be too out of place to ask, and if he wanted a sibling, he'd be better off getting one sooner rather than later; there would be an awkward age gap in just a few years. Five was already going to guarantee some measure of distance.

"I don't have a dad," Akihiko replied thoughtfully. "Can she make one all on her own?"

"Erm…" I held in a grimace. Well, that was a minefield if I ever saw one. How does one explain the mechanics of babymaking to a little boy just after he tells you he has no father? I thought about it for a moment.

"...Race you to that tree," I told him, pointing randomly down the road as I decided that you didn't.

Akihiko, ever the jock, took the bait without a second thought and shot off before I'd even had the chance to bend my knees. He had reached a large oak several seconds before I'd caught up to him.

"I win!" he puffed out his chest triumphantly. "I'm the best racer in the whole class."

"You probably are," I agreed thoughtfully. Four levels of Hurricane Gale and the fastest of the class… this kid was probably going to grow up to be a taijutsu beast. Just my luck to have befriended two of the most talented kids in my class.

Actually, when I paused to think about it, with Yoshiya's propensity for ninjutsu, my friends would probably end up on the same team. Friend groups, if their skillsets meshed, were often preserved in Genin teams—the Ino-Shika-Cho was probably the prime example—because friendship only helped when it came to teamwork, and teamwork was _very_ Konoha. We had a reputation for being "soft" and "nice" for that exact reason, neverminding the fact that we put out ninja like the Professor and the Sannin.

(Honestly, I was pretty sure it was all part of the village's PR scheme. Civilians would be far more willing to hire "nice" ninja, after all... which also probably explained the ungodly amount of pet-chasing, garden-tending, fence-painting, and other assorted menial tasks Genin were made to do.)

"Suzu?" Akihiko was snapping fingers in my face. "Hellooo?"

"Sorry," I apologized, gathering my thoughts and filing them away for later contemplation. I really had to stop checking out in the middle of conversations like that.

"You're always spacing out," he huffed, crossing his arms impatiently. "Come on, let's go. Bet I could beat you in a race to the Academy, too!"

* * *

Today marked the start of Basic Chakra Theory at the Academy. Most days I only listened with half an ear to our lessons—they usually covered things like basic mathematics or ninja stuff that I already knew from watching the anime—but for this lesson, I was all ears. Chakra was something mysterious, something that Earth had never seen, and I was going to take every opportunity to figure out everything I could about it. While the anime had been rich in information about its uses and its origin, I knew next to nothing of its mechanics. This, I hoped, would rectify that. After all, I had been acutely aware of my physical limitations as a human. We ran more slowly than almost every animal in existence. We were weaker, we were smaller, we heard less, we saw less… It had just been a fact of life. I would never be able to outrun a horse or balance like a cat. I couldn't climb walls like a lizard or dance on water like an insect.

And now that was wrong, because chakra made it possible. I needed to know everything I could about it.

Akihiko looked vaguely surprised by my unusual attentiveness. He was just as bad as me when it came to daydreaming in class, which wouldn't really have been a problem had he had some two decades of education stored in his little toddler head, but he obviously didn't; consequently, his grades suffered, which only cemented his reputation as the resident muscle-head. It wasn't that he was particularly stupid or anything, but he had no patience for book learning whatsoever.

"Alright, kids," our Chuunin sensei began, clapping his hands to draw our attention. I ceased thinking about Akihiko and peered at the teacher closely, prepared to absorb every word out of his mouth.

"Today we're covering one of the most important aspects of being a ninja..."

That afternoon, I learned a lot about chakra. When you molded it, it immediately began spilling out of the Hara—the stomach, that is—and into the circulatory system. You had to manipulate it by closing certain tenketsu points, which directed which way it would spill. For instance, if someone molded chakra for tree walking, he would close the tenketsu leading to every part of the body—head, arms, chest, etcetera—except the feet. This forced the chakra to flow to the site where it needed to be expelled.

The better a person could control their tenketsu, the better they could control their chakra. Those with good chakra control are able to close practically every unneeded tenketsu point, minimizing the amount wasted, while those with bad control would lose more because the chakra would leak out. The point of chakra control exercises, it seemed, was to familiarize yourself with the tenketsu points and the sensation of opening and closing them.

With that said, though, people don't really "close" their tenketsu points—in that sense it would be more like a Hyuuga stopping them up with Jyuuken blocks. It was more like filtering what chakra went where; if you actually did close your tenketsu points when channeling chakra to your feet, you would kill all of the muscles above the Hara, including the heart. Jyuuken users knew this, which was how Hyuugas killed people with a "Gentle Fist"; they simply gave them heart attacks by blocking all chakra flow to the chest, just the way Neji did to Hinata during the Chuunin Exam prelims. The blood, it seemed, was a side affect of cells rupturing due to the instability a sudden withdrawal of chakra caused.

That's where my next discovery came to play. There are actually two types of chakra: the chakra you mold intentionally and the chakra you mold naturally. The intentional chakra is used for techniques, while the natural chakra is the chakra your body produces on its own. The natural chakra flows through your muscles and makes them move. Closing tenketsu points is making it so intentional chakra is obstructed without impeding natural chakra.

That's also why chakra exhaustion kills people instead of just rendering them incapable of using jutsu. If a person continues to use techniques after running out of intentional chakra, the body begins taking the natural chakra from the muscles. First the arms, then the legs… Eventually, all of the natural chakra is drained away, robbing _all _muscles of their function, even the most essential ones. The heart stops beating and the lungs no longer contract and expand; the respiratory system grinds to a halt, leading to death by asphyxiation. You could be saved if someone with the same elemental nature chakra got to you in time and gave you transfusions, but you would be almost guaranteed to have some sort of brain damage due to lack of oxygen. And even then that wasn't always an option because in some really bad cases, if the jutsu in question was particularly massive, the chakra in the brain would be sucked right out. The result? A near-instantaneous death.

The Academy instructors were very serious as they delivered this last piece of information to us, because as small children, we had an extremely limited amount of energy to mix. If we tried to use jutsu, our bodies would almost immediately be forced to draw on natural chakra, and death would be in short order. That was why the learning of any actual techniques was saved for the final year of Academy instruction—to any normal five-year-old, a single E-rank jutsu was nothing short of fatal.

But as soon as the instructor said that, I sensed a loophole. Any _normal_ five-year-old... that wording implied that if you _weren't _a normal kid, it was possible. I found myself nodding—that did make sense. After all, Kakashi Hatake had graduated at the age of five, and passing the graduation exam meant being able to perform the three basic Academy jutsu with satisfactory proficiency.

But that begged the question: What did Kakashi have that other children didn't? I wracked my brain. Was it genetic? No, that couldn't be—even the best of clan kids, who were thoroughbred ninja stock, were incapable of using chakra at this age. Under that tenet, additional training wasn't the cause, either. On a physical level, any regular clan kid and Kakashi would be on even ground...

It struck me. They were level on a physical ground. That meant the limit wasn't to do with the body. But if it wasn't the body, then...

...Then it was mental. No, not mental—_spiritual. _

Oh, it all made sense! Kakashi had ten, no, _fifty_ times the amount of maturity any five-year-old did. That was why he could use chakra without killing himself—he had a high enough amount of spiritual energy to balance out the physical.

A great big smile bloomed across my face. So spiritual energy was the limiting reactant, was it? But if spiritual energy came from maturity and mental development and I, mentally a fully grown adult, was in possession of exceptionally well-developed mental faculties... then I had that particular reagent in excess. My only limit now was my body.

I held in a triumphant laugh. Today, I decided, was going to be a _great_ day.

* * *

**A/N:**

**Okay, this isn't relevant to the current chapter, but it's giving me a major headache and I'm just getting it all out now:**

**Kishimoto has, somewhere at whatever point, made a mistake regarding the ages of Kakashi and Obito and those lot. I don't know what's official and if he's going to retcon things or not, so I'm just going to make my own assumptions.**

**Maintaining the info from the databooks we already have and assuming everything in Kakashi Gaiden is correct, I'm still going with Kakashi's age six promotion to Chuunin. That puts a good chunk of Obito recollecting going to the Academy, taking the Chuunin Exams, Kakashi fighting Guy ect. into question, so I'm totally just pretending it didn't happen. Instead, I'm saying Kakashi graduated from the Academy at age 5 and got Minato as his sensei, but due to the combination of the number of graduates and Minato's young age, they have a one-on-one apprenticeship rather than a full team. They stay like that for awhile while Rin and Obito graduate from the Academy and take the Chuunin Exams on their own. By that time, Minato is older and decides he wants a full team, and he gets Rin and Obito to fill the slots. They have their bell test, but not to determine whether or not someone goes back to Academy, just to see if the team will work or not. After that, things go on as usual until Kakashi is promoted to Jounin the day of the mission to Kannabi Bridge.**

**_tl;dr Kakashi, Rin, and Obito are all the same age. They did not graduate together, nor did they take the Chuunin Exams together. Everything in this story operates on the assumption that the information provided in Kakashi Gaiden and the previous databooks will not be retconned._**

**/breath**

**Man, Kishimoto done derped. Makes my life harder, but oh well. Even if things do change, I'll just slap an AU in the story summary. It's an OC story anyway, there's going to be tons of meddling and canon-warping, so what's a little thing like this? Besides, I like my assumption better. If Kakashi and Obito had graduated together, it was likely they would've already achieved some sort of rapport by the time Kakashi Gaiden happened, the same way Naruto and Sasuke did. But if they'd only come together as a team after they all became Chuunin, the fact that they didn't get along just seems so much more plausible. It makes Minato's familiarity with Kakashi's skill level in the bell test scene work better, too.**

**Japanese terms: "ojisan" means uncle, "obasan" means aunt, and keigo is the form of speech one uses to be polite. ****With that said, though, Akihiko isn't actually all that polite to people who aren't his senior. You'll notice he doesn't use honorifics with either Yoshiya or Suzu. Though I suppose technically since Yoshiya is his best friend, that doesn't count. And since Suzu stopped using one for him the second she realized he didn't care, it's all mutual… but in the beginning, when they'd just met, he had been quite forward, which is actually very rude in Japanese culture. Suzu used be an American, though, so she didn't really care.**

**Also, natural chakra and natural energy should not be confused. The first keeps you alive; the second turns you to stone.**

**And with all that said, let me apologize for the novel of an author's note.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	4. Age 5: Spirit

**Published: 7/15/2014**

**Edited: 7/27/2014 for a title change.**

* * *

**Chapter 3: Age 5: Spirit**

"_You were doing _what?!"

"_Eep! It's not that big a deal, is it, Auntie? I mean, I had already determined that it wasn't dangerous for me to use chakra—"_

"_Suzu, you're fighting a losing battle. Take it from someone who knows... you're not getting out of this."_

* * *

"Something's got you in a good mood, kid," Itsuki observed.

Straight after school had let out, I had gone skipping to Itsuki's fruit store, still giddy with the discovery that I wouldn't have to wait half a decade to start using chakra. Of course, I refrained from telling anyone that I was going to try it—that was a great way to get into heaps of trouble—but I was itching to start experimenting.

"Yup," I agreed, grinning but giving no context.

Itsuki raised an eyebrow. I gave him my best mysterious look.

"Well, come on in," he shrugged after a moment, making a summoning motion with his hand and turning to go indoors. I followed after him, trying to control my beaming. Itsuki already had tea and dango laid out on the counter; I was practically bouncing as we settled in to chat.

Now, let it never be said that Itsuki was stupid. I have never met a more intelligent—and manipulative—nineteen-year-old in my life. As soon as I'd sat down he'd launched into a narrative of his first C-rank mission and how it had gone horrendously wrong, handily enthralling me with every little action-filled detail. When he'd finished that story, he jumped right into the next, and the next, and the next... We were already an hour in a half into the visit before I realized that he had told me nothing whatsoever of his "retirement"; it was five minutes before I had to go when I realized I'd been duped.

"You did that on purpose!" I exclaimed, not quite angrily, but still very irritatedly. "That's dirty, you jerk!"

"Please, kid," Itsuki snorted, waving his bare dango stick at me and looking rather unimpressed. "If you're going to be a ninja, you'll have to do better than that."

"I'm five!" I protested, scowling heavily. "That's not fair! You can't just take advantage of me like —"

"But I can," the teen cut in sharply, expression going dark. "And so will others, and for crueler reasons than this. There is no such thing as fair play, Suzu Namikaze."

I flinched, feeling myself go wide-eyed. Itsuki's hazel eyes were a mix of swirling emotion, angry and sad and icy… and scary.

"But you—" I began weakly, taken very much off-guard by his unprecedented attitude change. What was up with him all of a sudden?

"I'm not just going to up give you the most painful story of my life just because you hit your head on a box of lychee," Itsuki informed coldly, crossing his arms and sitting back against the wall, mouth set in a hard line. "You have earn the privilege to hear that story."

If I hadn't been so shocked, I might have cried. This man was totally different from the one I had met yesterday, the one who had smiled at me and bandaged my head and laughed with me over sweets. This man was frigid and unsympathetic, severe and hard-hearted.

"I-I," I stuttered feebly, utterly at a loss for words.

Itsuki crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow, expression never softening, amity never returning. No, I thought, that wasn't Itsuki. That was a stranger.

I swallowed.

"I—I should go now," I finally managed, quickly sliding off my stool and setting my tea cup on it. The man called Mikawaya only continued to stare at me dispassionately; I hesitated only a second longer before bolting away, feeling my eyes begin to burn.

It was a while before I realized that his hands had been shaking when I'd left.

* * *

I have never been good at processing negative emotions. Dealing with rejection was probably the field in which I was poorest, and it showed; as soon as I'd reached a deserted park across the market district, having run a full five minutes without stopping, I'd promptly sat down on a swing and burst out crying.

It took me a good twenty minutes to just chill out and begin thinking something beyond _why did he do that that was horrible _and _he's right why would he tell me how could I assume _and _I'm such an asshole he hates me_. After that, though, I did what I did best and shoved the whole affair out of my mind. I was a champion when it came to avoiding my problems, after all; finding distractions was one of my great talents. And as it so happened, I had the perfect puzzle to take my mind off of things—people spent lifetimes studying chakra, after all.

The House, I knew, would be a horrible location for practicing chakra—at least for now—because there were too many distractions and the chances of getting caught were astronomically high. I couldn't go back yet if I wanted to give it a try today. After inspecting the area for a few minutes, though, I realized this park would a great place for it: There was no one here except for a lone pair of siblings dangling on the monkey bars a few ways away, and even if they noticed me, which was rather doubtful, they wouldn't be able to tell what I was doing.

I nodded, course of action decided. I stood up and reached for one of the swing set's supporting bars, grasping it and pulling myself up to the top. Once I scooted into position, I slowly stood up on the top bar and took a deep breath before jumping at the tree just beyond, where I caught a branch and hauled myself up.

Ah, ninja blood. The climbing gene must be genetic, because if I had done that back home, I'd have probably broken my neck.

I climbed a bit higher to hide myself and found a nice forked branch to settle in. Lying back against three crossing limbs, I wedged my sandal's sole in where the bough split and made sure that I would be secure. Once I was sure I wouldn't fall if I passed out, I relaxed my muscles and set to contemplating how to mold chakra.

Alright, what did I know? Chakra was the fuel for ninja techniques. It had its own circulatory system that moved in a spiral. It was originally intended to allow people to connect to others' spiritual energy, but people used it connect to themselves so they could use ninjutsu. To make it, I needed to mix physical and spiritual energy…

"Better start simple," I muttered, plucking a leaf off of the branch near my head. I vaguely recalled the fact that the feet were one of the hardest places to put out chakra, so the tree walking exercise was right out, but leaf sticking was something I knew Academy students did. That made sense, though; if chakra was hard to put out in the feet—which was mostly because there was only a single tenketsu in the very center of the foot's bridge—the forehead, which still only had a single tenketsu but a comparably smaller surface area, would be magnificently less frustrating a place to teach young children to manipulate their chakra.

Well, I thought, sitting up and holding the leaf to my forehead, here goes. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, imagining the energy swirling in the Hara, thinking of Jiraiya's explanation of spinning the chakra in a certain direction. What felt the most natural? I pursed my lips and concentrated. Clockwise, it seemed…

I felt a grin begin to stretch across my face as a small trickle of warmth slid through my stomach, like hot tea in an empty belly. It was a pleasant feeling. Alright, so that was mixing chakra? That was easy. This wouldn't be so bad.

"Oh," I muttered as the warmth began to escape. Okay, closing tenketsu came next. But where were the tenketsu? I concentrated, tracking the path of the hot-tea sensation and feeling where it began to snake out. I focused on those spots, willing the chakra to stop; to my delight, vein by vein, its advance halted.

Victorious, I let a single sliver climb up through my chest and to my throat, carefully stopping up any escape routes. Finally, after warming my cheeks and temples, I felt the tiniest bit pool onto my forehead. It pushed up against the leaf, clinging to its grooves and bumps.

I slowly let my arm drop.

"Success!" I cheered when it continued to hang on my skin, held in place by the chakra. It fell off a second later and floated to the ground, but I didn't care because I had _totally _used chakra just now and holy _crap that was awesome!_ I did the leaf-sticking exercise on my first try!

I eagerly grabbed another leaf, this time letting the chakra flow through my right arm and to the tip of my index finger. Gingerly, I poked the leaf and watched, amazed, as it stuck even as I held it upside down and waved it around. I pulled the leaf off and let the chakra flood my hand before pushing it onto the branch next to me; there was a quiet crunch as the chakra grabbed onto the bark and held.

Okay, let me just tell you all now that when I get excited, I do stupid things. Yes, I _know _that is not a good habit for a ninja-in-training to have, but I can't help it; that's just how I am. Besides, who had time to think about the potential dangers of a volatile and physics-defying energy force when you could do awesomely cool physics-defying things with it? Certainly not me.

But with that said, I really should have thought twice before I placed the leaf back onto my palm and slapped another chakra-coated hand over it. Why? Because the stupid little green monster shot out and sliced right through my arm, cutting across my forearm before burying its tip in my bicep. Blood immediately began leaking from the laceration, little beads of red merging to make a thin, angry crimson line.

I stared, aghast, at the innocuous little plant organ sticking out of my skin. It was regular leaf, teardrop-shaped with a light green stem and several little veins. It was faintly serrated at the edges, but by no means should ithave been able to break my skin. And that besides, the cut was far too neat to have come from from such a jagged edge.

What the hell?

Blood began to dribble down my arm and to my elbow, where it formed tiny blots that hung suspended for a second in the air before falling down to the earth. I watched it drip for a moment longer before dumbly pulling the leaf out of my upper arm and folding it between my thumb and middle finger; it immediately bent, flimsy and delicate. I put its edge to my left index finger and ran it over the skin repeatedly like a saw, but it only tickled me.

...What the hell?

I took out a napkin I'd stuffed in my pocket at lunch and wiped up my arm before it could get all over my clothes; I really didn't feel like explaining to Auntie why the brand new zip-up vest that I had begged and begged for (what? It was a cool vest with a hood and a zipper that could go all the way up to my nose!) was suddenly all blotched up with blood. Then I turned my attention back to the leaf.

Very, _very _carefully, I coated my hands with chakra again and then closed them over the leaf. It didn't jump out and try to maul me again, but it _did _suddenly begin buzzing uncontrollably. Eyes squeezed half-shut in trepidation, I slowly lifted one hand.

The leaf stayed put and, thankfully, didn't begin shredding my hand off now that it was free. It was glowing a faint light blue, humming with energy. I gently picked it up, making sure not to touch its edges, and ran it across the tree's trunk. It carved a rough line across the bark.

"Oh my God," I said lowly, jaw dropping as realization hit me. That was _chakra flow_.

"Holy _shit!_" I shrieked delightedly, throwing my hands into the air; the leaf lost its sheen when I let it go. "I am a _genius!_"

(It was lucky no one I knew what around to hear me begin cackling like a madwoman, because if there had been, I probably would have been shipped straight to the loony bin.)

After a moment of concentration, I recalled Asuma's explanation of chakra flow to Naruto: It was two opposing chakra currents, grinding together to sharpen each other to deadly little pieces. Or, well, that was what he said in regard to wind chakra flow, which must have been what I had used, because the only other cutting-capable chakra type was lightning, and I was fairly sure my primary nature wasn't lightning. I mean, it was possible I had it as a tertiary nature, but I was a Namikaze, and when it came to Namikazes it's either wind or water. Being from the wave branch of the clan, I would have thought my primary would have been water, but I knew as a fact from my Academy lessons that secondary chakra natures took years of practice to use without extreme concentration. I had infused that leaf with wind chakra without even meaning to, so there was no way it was my secondary.

What luck it was for me to have randomly decided to smash my chakra-coated hands together over a leaf! I felt my cheeks going rosy with exhilaration. If I could get this down by the time I became a Genin, it—

...It could save my life.

My excitement faded, replaced by creeping sense of horror. When I became a Genin, a war would be on. Though Minato—who I had been using as my measuring stick to determine the timeline—had only just recently become a Jounin, he had mentioned to me a few days ago he would be taking on a six-year-old Genin just recently graduated from the Academy as his student. That could be no one but Kakashi, and if Kakashi was six now, about one and a half years older than me, that meant that the Third Shinobi World War was seven years away at the _latest_. But I highly doubted it would take that long, because if Kakashi had been thirteen when Kannabi Bridge happened, and Kannabi Bridge had marked the beginning of the end of the war, there was no way I had seven years. Given the fact that I remember a scene from the anime where Kakashi's agemates had been eating dango and "celebrating the long war's end," as I recalled one of them saying, it was entirely possible that the war could even start _tomorrow_.

When curfew rolled around and I came down from my tree, my hands were shaking. They were aching and raw after putting out so much chakra for the first time, but I just gritted my teeth and held on to the feeling grim determination.

I wasn't going to just _get this down_ anymore. I was going to _master _it.

* * *

"You're pretty crabby today," Yoshiya told me bluntly the next day over lunch.

I paused in scowling at my lunch box and looked up and him in surprise.

"Is it that obvious?" I asked, holding back a sigh as I shoved a piece of potato into my mouth, wincing when I accidentally stabbed my gums with my chopsticks. Yoshiya raised an eyebrow.

"Stupid question, sorry," I did sigh then, putting my elbow on the desk and leaning my cheek into my hand, laying my chopsticks down glumly.

"You wanna share?" Akihiko asked through a giant mouthful of onigiri, spraying a few morsels as he spoke. Yoshiya made a gagging noise.

"You're disgusting," he informed, delivering a well-placed kick to our spiky-haired friend's leg before quickly scooting away. I wrinkled my nose and picked a bit of half-chewed nori off my arm.

"I think I'm with Yoshiya on this," I decided, eyeing the repulsive mess of slobbery rice covering the desk with a grimace. "That is so gross, Akihiko."

Akihiko scowled and began chewing furiously. A huge lump distended his throat when he swallowed, making the skin stick out so far that I wondered how he wasn't choking.

"Shut up," he gasped after he forced the food down with a long swig of juice. "I can eat however I want. But seriously, what's up with you?"

I pursed my lips in contemplation. Was complex social interaction above their heads? Would they understand how the little nuances of Itsuki's demeanor could mean so much more than they appeared to? They were still so young, and besides that, they were young boys, so when they got angry, they said so.

"There's this shopkeeper I've been visiting lately," I said at a length, wondering how best to describe my problem to them. "He was really nice to me when I met him. He helped me out and gave me food and stuff."

Akihiko stared. "I don't see the problem," he said.

"She's not finished, dumbo," Yoshiya rolled his eyes. Akihiko bristled and turned to glare at him.

"The _problem_," I interrupted before they could get started, "is that yesterday he did a total one-eighty. He went from really friendly to really mean."

"Oh," Akihiko said, attention successfully diverted. He turned back to face me. "Did you say something?"

"I might've, but I don't think that was the issue," I sighed, not quite sure if the whole "you're not fair" thing could have prompted such an extreme swerve in demeanor. Something told me that was more a symptom of the change than the cause.

"So he suddenly was just mean to you?" Yoshiya asked thoughtfully. "If you didn't do anything, maybe it's not your fault. Maybe he's just taking something out on you."

Was that it? I would be the last person to be surprised if Itsuki had some sort of repressed issue. I thought back and imagined him. Arms crossed, eyebrow raised… expectation in his eyes.

He had been checking me, assessing me for something. It was the look someone gave when a student failed a test, when they couldn't solve a problem… But what had he wanted me to do? What had I done wrong?

"You should just beat him up," Akihiko suggested cheerfully. Ah, that was typical Akihiko, just hit the problem until it solves itself.

I paused.

...Hit the problem?

"I don't like the look on your face," Yoshiya said anxiously. "Please don't tell me you're taking this moron seriously."

"Hey!" Akihiko protested, indignant.

"Akihiko, do you think you could beat a Chuunin?" I asked slowly, gears turning in my head. Itsuki had said he'd been a Chuunin...

"Huh? Um, maybe," he blinked, looking surprised that I really was asking. "Yeah, probably, if I took him off guard. Do you know the ikken hissatsu kata from third tier?"

Ikken hissatsu, to annihilate in one blow. That was unusual for Hurricane Gale, which was heavy in counters and defensive techniques. The philosophy of our clan's style was that one should never throw the first blow.

"I'm only learning at the second level right now," I shook my head negative. "I didn't know we had techniques like that."

"My shishou says that if you're fighting someone who outclasses you in skill and experience, you have to end the fight in a flash," he informed. "He says that's when it's necessary."

"Do you think... you could show me?" I asked a bit hesitantly, glancing at the clock on the classroom wall. There were still forty-five minutes till lunch ended.

"If you want," Akihiko grinned a bit. "Well, you need to have learned the Rising Tide attack forms, though."

"I have those down," I nodded. Rising Tide was one of the first offensive kata learned in Hurricane Gale.

"You're joking!" Yoshiya took the opportunity to put in, looking astounded. "You aren't seriously going to try to beat up a Chuunin for being mean to you, are you?"

"Nope," I said, getting up to follow Akihiko outside. Yoshiya stared.

"...Then what are you doing?" he asked bemusedly.

"I'm going to beat up a Chuunin to prove a point," I replied.

* * *

I will not claim to be a tactical mastermind. Analytics, calculations, predictions… that sort of thing I left to others. But even though I couldn't claim to be good at strategizing, I _could _claim to be decently clever; the fact that I had something to prove probably helped.

Over the course of the next three days, I lurked around Mikawaya Fruits, observing Itsuki's routine from a distance. I had no doubt that he noticed me—even with my hood on and collar zipped all the way up, it was hard to miss such a deliberate child—but I had planned for that, too, so that when I showed up on the third afternoon I was totally ignored.

Perfect.

Itsuki emerged from the shop carrying a stack of heavily loaded crates, eyes briefly flickering toward me. The second he turned his gaze away, I sprang forward.

Itsuki, I knew, had once been a Chuunin, a journeyman ninja who had seen a fair bit of combat. I also knew that battle senses, once developed, were never fully lost. But Itsuki had not been in practice for a long while, so while he dropped his burden and blocked my first punch easily, catching my wrist and lifting it so I was forced to stand on my toes, he was totally unprepared for the shameless nutshot I delivered with my foot.

He had enough self control not to scream or anything, but he immediately sank to his knees, releasing my hand with a pained grunt. I spread my feet apart like Akihiko had showed me and took a deep breath.

"Hurricane Gale: Tidestrike!" I shouted. Shouting, however corny it seemed, was a very important part of martial arts here. Kiai, it was called, and though sometimes it startled or intimidated opponents, it was mostly just to convey a fighting spirit. If anything, it helped the user concentrate on performing the attack better.

My first strike was deflected, but it brought me in close enough range to slam my palm over Itsuki's ear. Sense of orientation disrupted, his next block was fumbling enough for me to bring my sandal up and plant it over his windpipe with a victorious yell.

Yes, that was my plan all along. Lull Itsuki into a false sense of safety by doing nothing for two days, kick him in the balls to bring his neck into my range, and use one of my clan's very few killing strikes to give him this message: I am going to be a ninja. Maybe I was only a kid, and maybe this attack would only bruise him, but I was on my way. That, I had realized after talking with my friends, was what he had been waiting for: proof that I could be a ninja.

"I don't know what made you retire," I told him, slightly out of breath, "but whatever it was, don't think I'll let it happen to me."

For a moment, Itsuki could only stare at me, lips parted just a bit. Then he let out a hoarse chuckle.

"That was dirty," he complained, staggering to his feet.

"No fair play," I grinned in reply, far more cheekily than I should have. The brunet cracked a smile.

"Kid, you might be okay after all," he said.

* * *

**A/N: Yes, Suzu puts on her srsbsns face for the first time. She's had fun goofing around for the past few chapters, but from here on out, things are, as predicted, probably going to get worse. A lot worse.**

**Yoshiya and Akihiko may bicker a lot, but they really are good friends. They met because Akihiko couldn't get a seesaw going on his own and Yoshiya was there to help, and there is nothing better to inspire friendship between two little boys.**

**As a side note, though Suzu says yelling out technique names is a form of kiai, actual kiai are usually only a single syllable. Also, I was really, really tempted to title this chapter "Nutshot."**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**

**(PS: I kind of want to write a sidestory showing Itsuki's thought process throughout this chapter. What do you guys think?)**


	5. Age 9: War

**Published: 7/27/2014**

**Edited: 8/24/2014 for typos.**

* * *

**Chapter 4: Age 9: War**

"_Those days before everything went to hell... We were so easygoing, excited about whatever tomorrow held, just cheerfully going about our lives. What would things be like now if we had studied more, trained harder, and gone in knowing some of us would never come out? We were so oblivious… we didn't have a clue."_

* * *

"You've got a letter, Suzu!"

A scroll sailed through the air. I looked up observed its arc, wondering if I needed to catch it, but Auntie Reiko had impeccable aim; the little cylinder cleared Sachiko's head by a good two inches and landed straight into my lap. I put down my notebook—I had been doing some old-fashioned last-minute cramming—and picked it up.

It was sealed with a blue cloth. _Namikaze Misuzu_, it read, _Central Block Building 2, Namikaze Compound, Konoha Residential District 1_. I grinned at the familiar script and immediately unrolled it.

"'_Dear Suzu,'_" I read aloud for the benefit of my cousins, who had immediately crowded around me on the sofa once they realized who it was from. "'_I hope you're doing well. I'm fine, though it's pretty tiring being here on the front lines, always wondering when the next skirmish will be. The Iwa ninja have been fighting even harder than usual and we've lost a lot of good men. Morale is starting to dip and supplies have been running low. Hopefully Hokage-sama will be sending teams to restock us soon._

"'_I haven't had any serious injuries as of yet, but my friend Jun'ya had to have an amputation yesterday because an enemy shinobi crushed his legs with an earth jutsu. Lately we've been trying to fight long-range from the treetops because the enemy has been sucking people into the dirt, but there's a new ninjutsu specialist who keeps knocking entire sections of the forest over with a technique that grows stalagmites out of the ground. We may be on opposite sides of the conflict, but I at times I can't help but admire the Stone ninjas' tenacity and persistence… even though it means our field medics are swamped._

"'_I miss everyone at the House as usual, too. It'll be nice to have Auntie Reiko's cooking again when I come back. I should be home soon; my rotation ends in three months. Until then, stay healthy, and good luck on your graduation exam—I know you'll be amazing. I hope you get a good team. Love, Minato._

"'_PS: I put a standard-issue Iwa-style sword in the attached storage scroll. I know Tenrou will have been whining for one, so please give it to him before Heiwako strangles him. Tell Auntie not to worry, I've already checked it for poison. It's hardly been used, so it must have been someone's spare.'_"

"What? Awesome!" Tenrou, our resident kenjutsu freak, jumped up with a whoop. "Niichan is the _best!_"

"I better not catch you cutting trees again, Tenrou," Auntie warned from the doorway, where she was sorting through the rest of the mail. "You should be glad I've been letting you use a live blade at all. One more time and it'll be back to practice swords for you."

"Might as well just demote him now, then," Heiwako declared with caustic smirk. "If there's anything Ten-kun lacks, it's self-control."

"What? Says the fatty who ate _three _bowls of rice this morning!" Tenrou retaliated angrily.

Heiwako started, arms automatically coming down to encircle her waist. "Fatty—?" she repeated dumbly, looking stricken. There was a beat of silence before she was up on her feet and breathing fire, face red with wrath of the heavens. "_Fatty?_" she roared, throwing herself forward with a loud battle cry. "You _never _call a lady a fatty!"

"You're the manliest lady I've ever met!" Tenrou taunted, diving away from her lunge before scrambling to the door. "Fatty, fatty, fatty!"

"Kids," Uncle Souhei said loudly from his place on the floor at the coffee table, drawing our attention away from the fight as the two ran outside. He adjusted his glasses and set down his book, fixing each of us with a stern stare. "Let those two be a lesson of what _not _to emulate when you become Genin."

"Yes, Uncle," we chorused. Though Heiwako and Tenrou were both older than me—they had been Genin for a year and a half now—they were probably the most childish pair of friends in the entire House. Given the fact that five of us kids were due to become official ninja in a few hours, it was hardly the smartest time to be acting like that. I eyed Auntie Reiko warily; those two were going to be due for a good scolding later... possibly in the form of the worst training session of their lives. I really hoped they hadn't forgotten who was in charge of taijutsu lessons in this household.

"We have five minutes before we have to go," Jinta observed in the ensuing silence, glancing at the clock hanging above the window. "What were the seals for kawarimi again?"

"Ram, boar, ox, dog and snake," Akira instantly replied.

I looked at him sidelong. That kid was a walking dictionary. One time I asked him what his longest set of seals was and he had gone through over a _hundred_ of them.

"You're definitely going to fail if you don't know kawarimi," Chiharu said, looking unimpressed.

"I was just double-checking, okay?" Jinta scowled defensively, shuffling anxiously. "I know it, I just wanted to make sure."

"Jinta, you shouldn't have to double check the seals." Uncle Souhei raised an eyebrow, glancing up at us before returning to his reading, eyes scanning the page before him critically. It was a plain brown book with a blank cover, and the writing was very small and cramped. It was impossible to make out from here, but judging by the shape of the words and the spaces in the text, it wasn't Japanese.

Huh. Was he studying a cipher?

"The seconds you spend wondering how you should twist your fingers are the seconds that can determine life and death," Auntie Reiko put in helpfully as she finished what she was doing and went to go sit behind her husband on the couch. "It's very dangerous for new ninja right now, you know."

"But we never need the Academy jutsu anyway," Tenrou complained as he appeared at the window, having apparently returned after evading his teammate. "All we do is pick vegetables and chase pets."

I felt my eyebrows fly up. So Genin did missions like that even in times of war? The way Tsunade had been talking to Nawaki, telling him to run if he ever saw an enemy ninja, it had sounded to me like they were sending kids out into danger all the time. But then again, that did make sense; if Konoha refused missions for being too trivial, that would make us seem weak. If they were so unimportant, why shouldn't we be able to complete them?

I wasn't sure what to make of that. Tora hadn't been born yet, had she?

"Welcome back, Tenrou," Auntie greeted, smiling sweetly. Tenrou took one look at her, paled several shades, and turned right back around before sprinting away. Uncle Souhei snorted.

"He knows he has to come back eventually," he said, never looking up. "People, always putting off the inevitable..."

Ah, Souhei Namikaze. A neverending font of snark and dry wit, my favorite uncle was. I could never match his eloquence, but I was very fond of it—and him—despite that.

"Suzu?" called another voice from the window. Akihiko popped up, peering in at my gathered family members curiously. Despite the passage of four years, his wardrobe had remained quite consistent: as always, he was dressed in very vivid red. Still, it wasn't like I was much better; I still had my super ninja vest and its awesome eye-high zipper. I even still wore the same kind of black skirt I had as a kid.

"You coming?" he asked. "We're gonna be late."

In unison, the House's inhabitants turned their heads and looked up at the clock.

"..._Crap!_"

* * *

From what I could tell, the graduation exam hadn't changed much between now and Naruto's time. I never got to see them take the written portion of the exam, but it was pretty just the same as all of the other tests we took: we got our papers, sat down at our seats, and filled out the questions.

I passed it quite handily—I had been a pro test-taker in my old life, too—but that wasn't really saying much. It was just the written portion, after all. Two or three history questions, some math, a few strategic scenarios… After the exams were handed in I settled in with Yoshiya and Akihiko to wait for my turn in the practical. Yoshiya went before us, and after him Akihiko was called by virtue of his given name. I went immediately after because we were the only two Namikazes in this class.

I was sent into an empty classroom where a Chuunin instructor was waiting; he looked down at a clipboard and asked me to complete various tasks, ranging from push-ups to kata to leaf-sticking. I held back a grimace when he placed the little green plant bit in my palm and quickly stuck it to my forehead, trying not to remember my previous encounters with innocuous little plant organs. After that, he selected two of the three E-rank Academy jutsu for me to perform—kawarimi and henge—before looking me over, nodding, and tossing a forehead protector at me.

"Congratulations, you pass," he told me, only slightly dully. I looked at his faintly glazed gaze and felt a bit bad for him. I knew there had been a reason I had been studying to be a researcher and not a teacher before I came here.

When I went outside my best friends were waiting, Yoshiya grinning madly and Akihiko unashamedly hooting and shouting, jumping around and doing backflips. I smiled at the sight of them and pulled the navy blue cloth of the hitae-ate around my forehead, pulling back my bangs so they wouldn't itch and tying a knot under my tufty little ponytail.

"You passed!" Akihiko crowed loudly when he saw me, flipping out of a handstand and diving at me with a hug. "This is so _awesome! _I _so _bet we'll be on a team together, it'll be _great!_"

"Do you think she wouldn't?" Yoshiya demanded with a laugh, punching him in the shoulder before offering me his warmest, sunniest smile. "Congrats. It'll make me really happy if we're on a team together, too."

"Me too." I smiled back a bit painfully, hugging Akihiko back before jabbing him in the sides so he could let me go and I could breathe again. He released me with a gasp and glared.

"You look good, Akihiko," I told him before he decided that a fight was in order. Unlike Yoshiya, who was above such plebian things as fist fighting, Akihiko knew I occasionally engaged in a quick slugfest—not that I ever won against him—and wouldn't hesitate to get the jump on me.

"Y'think?" he lit up with a laugh, adjusting his forehead protector and puffing his chest out.

Sometimes, I thought a bit dryly, this kid made it a bit _too _easy. But instead of telling him that, I just nodded solemnly; no need to undo the work you've already accomplished.

"I wish I could do that," Yoshiya told me enviously as Akihiko grinned and cartwheeled away. I just gave him a wry smile. He'd learn how to distract little kids when he was older, too… and not a little kid himself.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent chasing after Akihiko and collecting snacks from various shopkeepers who knew us and were fond enough to give them. We stopped by the Mikawaya fruit store, but Itsuki was away, so we just shrugged and moved on. Yoshiya came to hang out with us at the Namikaze compound, so Akihiko and I showed him different places of interest—Akihiko's house, mine, the clan training ground, the stone garden and the koi in the pond. When all was done, we shared popsicles at the House before separating until tomorrow, when we would receive team assignments.

* * *

_Niichan,_

_Tenrou says thank you for the sword. Heiwako's still making fun of him, but he's been practicing kenjutsu ever since he got it, so Auntie is glad. That was a very clever way to get him to stop slacking off. It was like you bribed him without even having to speak to him._

_I graduated fourth in my class, behind my friend Yoshiya and two boys from the Hyuuga clan. I'm not sure if that makes me top kunoichi, though, because I think Serizawa Haruhi had a higher cumulative score than me. My friend Akihiko would have probably been Rookie of the Year if he wasn't so bad at taking tests—he got a perfect score on the practical._

_I'm really happy with my team, Team 11, because my teammates are my best friends. Yoshiya and Akihiko were really happy too, though there was a problem with our sensei, who was supposed to be back from the front lines two weeks ago. They sent a messenger out to the field and they found out she had actually been killed a little while ago, so we've just been operating under different Chuunin advisors because there are no other free Jounin in the village. It's okay, though, because we've only been running D-ranks for the past few weeks._

_By the way, this is just a theory I came up with, but when you were a Genin, was there a crazy demon-cat you had to capture for the daimyo's wife? Because there's this lost pet mission where we have to catch a cat named Toramaru and there's a procedure sheet in the scroll that has it down to an exact science. I swear that kind of precision only comes with years of refinement, and whenever Lady Shijiko comes she doesn't even have to explain anymore because they just know what she needs._

_I feel really bad for that cat. He's always being strangled and she puts a bow on him even though he's a boy. That probably explains why he's so ferocious. He's already taken out Yoshiya twice; I bet the only reason why the village accepts this mission is because we get paid so much to do it—it's unbelievable how many Genin have been seriously injured on this mission. Do you think someone's given it ninja training? Maybe it's descended from a nin-cat..._

_Anyway, because we've been performing really well, they're going to give us our first C-rank even though it hasn't even been two months yet. We're going to run the supply line with a couple of Chuunin squads. They're splitting us up, but that's not really unusual. They do that a lot since we don't have a jounin-sensei._

_I'm going to Tatsumi River. That's where you are, right? We've included ink and blank scrolls, too, so you can start writing letters again. That's why you haven't sent anything for the past two months, right? I remember you saying you were running out of supplies. Sorry I've been sending you basically the same letter this whole entire time. I wasn't sure if you'd gotten the last one, so I just kept writing the same updates. But at least this part is new! Anyway, if we're lucky, we might bump into each other while I'm there. That would be great._

_See (hopefully) you soon!_

_Love,_

_Suzu_

* * *

Assumptions, as everyone knows, are dangerous to make, and going into a mission with them is a big mistake. I made many, many mistakes on my first C-rank, and that was one of them—I assumed Minato had stopped writing me letters because he'd run out of supplies.

We should have been expecting the unexpected that day, but it was easy to let down your guard when you're surrounded by a group of big, buff Chuunin. Well, two big, buff Chuunin and one slightly skinnier one. Nothing could possibly get to me with such a giant wall of muscle around me. And in turn it was easy for _them _to let down their guard because when the village sends a Genin to fill in an empty spot in a platoon, then hey, things obviously aren't going to be _dangerous_.

Yeah. Second mistake.

The sound of combat was so completely unanticipated that we actually all just froze up when we heard it. Literally, we stood there like idiots with our mouths hanging open. Theoretically, the supply line should have remained behind Konoha's lines the entirety of the way, and the only place we might hear a little peep of a swordfight was at the base camp, which was still several hours away. But we were not at the camp and we could hear fighting and that, of course, could only mean one thing: Something had gone wrong, and we were in the middle of it.

Standing. Like targets with bulls' eyes on them.

Third mistake.

My Chuunin comrades were dead before they even knew what was happening. The only reason why I escaped a swift decapitation myself was because I was several feet shorter than everyone else. Naturally, I screamed like the little girl I was and dove into the bushes like a headless chicken.

Now, I was not a particularly talented or clever girl. I mean, I could be cool once in a while at a couple of things, but that was true of everyone; all people could name a couple of times in their lives when they did something awesome. I had a few of them myself.

This was not one of them.

When someone seized me by the ankle and dragged me out of my ill-conceived notion of a hiding place, I panicked. I flailed, I screamed, and I did the worst thing any ninja could ever do—I _stopped thinking. _I had no plan, no response, not even a basic instinct to fight back. My brain just shut down. Years' worth of training and practicing in taijutsu and chakra and tactics cumulated in nothing, for at that moment, the sum of my thoughts equated to this:

_PLEASE GOD DON'T KILL ME PLEASE DON'T LET THEM KILL ME PLEASE I DON'T WANT TO DIE._

Pathetic mental grovelling—fourth mistake.

Honestly, I should have died that day. It wasn't fair that I survived. A thousand other kids on a thousand other battlefields died for smaller slip-ups—why should I have been special? It was something I struggled with for a long time. Why had I lived where countless others died? Even today I don't quite have a satisfactory answer, but the short one was something like this: Luck. Luck, and Minato Namikaze.

As I was frantically wiggling around, trying to break free instead of thinking about how it would probably be a good idea to block the sword strike that was about to take my head off, I saw a flash of yellow. It was just a brief burst of color, and before I could register what was happening I was being snatched out of the air and thrown over someone's shoulder. The only thing I saw of my attacker was his blood spraying over the ground.

A sharp whistle pierced the air and my rescuer leapt up into the trees, moving at speeds that could only be described as Mach 5. It was all I could do to cling for dear life, heart pounding wildly, breath coming in short gasps. I would later come to understand that many shinobi conflicts were like that: explosive, terrifying, and over in a blink of an eye. But at that moment my head was spinning, unable to process, still frozen in fear and shock.

What had just happened? Had my squad—had they just _died?_

"Deep breaths," someone was counselling me, holding my shoulders. "Shh. You're okay now. Calm down."

I found myself staring up into the face of the cousin I hadn't seen in nearly a year. He was smeared in dirt and blood, with twigs and leaves sticking out of his hair and rips in his clothes. Several others were standing around behind him, eyeing us closely. I blinked and looked around me; it was dark and it smelled of dirt, as though we were underground, or in some sort of cave.

...When the hell had we gotten here?

"Niichan," I said weakly, feeling like I had just run ten marathons in the space of ten seconds.

"Suzu," Minato murmured, wrapping me in a badly-needed hug. I could feel myself trembling as I fisted my hands against his flak jacket.

"What are you doing here?" he asked once we separated, hands still on my shoulders, blue eyes sharp and calculating. There was a glint in his gaze that I was unused to seeing; it made his face look hard and intimidating, like someone had just made a very bad mistake and was going to be paying for it soon. "Things are going badly, but not to the point where they should be sending you."

Despite the haze that had fallen over my brain, I translated that bit of dialogue easily: It's bad, but not bad enough that we need cannon fodder. I had the presence of mind to feel faintly alarmed. Had Minato seen Genin sent to their deaths on the field before?

"We… we were supposed to deliver supplies," I told him shakily, fisting my hands in my lap. "I-I… I sent you a letter…"

"Communications were cut a week ago," Minato told me grimly. "But if they sent you, that must mean they don't know…"

"...They got Junichi, didn't they?" someone behind him sighed, face turned downwards. "There's no way he wouldn't have relayed the message if he'd made it."

"It's more than likely they managed to intercept him," Minato agreed, face dark. The gathered ninja murmured restlessly—whoever Junichi was, he was most certainly dead by now. I began to feel a bit sick.

"Niichan…"

"I'm sorry," Minato apologized, looking at me regretfully as he got to his feet. "This can't wait—will you be okay here for a bit? We can talk when I'm done, so if you could just stay here for a while..."

_Where would I go?_ I wanted to ask. I'd get killed for real if I went out there on my own. But instead I just nodded and looked away, pulling my knees to my chest.

That was the first glimpse of the war I ever got. It would have been nice if that had been the extent of it, but I would be lying if I said I believed that this would be the worst of it.

No one ever said ninjas were _nice_, after all.

* * *

We spent a week in that underground shelter. The few remaining Leaf-nin with earth-natured chakra had carved it out, and the genjutsu specialists had hidden our presence with a large area-of-effect technique. It was the perfect place for a bunch of tree-huggers, as the Iwa-nin called us, to conceal themselves. If they had bothered to check for us in the ground they would've found us easily, but there was something to be said about hiding in plain sight.

Minato, I learned, had quickly become the de facto leader after the squad leader had died two weeks ago. He spent hours at a time talking and strategizing, analyzing maps and movements, trying find out how we could scrape out a victory with Konoha's remaining forces, a paltry seventeen shinobi plus a useless baby Genin. I spent most of my time keeping out of the way, looking over people's shoulders from a distance and listening to them try to plan their counterattack. Around the fifth day, they began to argue a lot, and Minato's expression grew tighter and tighter with every passing hour. By the time the eighth dawned I knew something was about to go down. I could feel it in the air; there was going to be a fight, and it was going to be today.

That's another thing I learned about the war. The reprieves are never long.

"It's too dangerous," someone was hissing at my cousin, clutching something in his hands. The shelter was lit by emergency lamps, so it was too dark to see what it was, but a quick surveillance of the shelter revealed that several others were holding similar packages. I found myself feeling a bit wary. What was that, then? Bombs? Poison gas? With with numbers like these, I would be the last to be surprised if we were about to launch a large-scale chemical attack.

I soon found out, though, that it was something totally different. Minato crouched down in front of me and began unwrapping a mass of brown paper; from that, he withdrew a heavy and misshapen kunai and placed it in my hand. I felt my eyes go wide.

"I had Auntie Reiko get these made up and sent to me about a month ago," he told me quietly, taking my fingers and folding them over the hilt. "They're for a new technique I've just recently mastered. I'm going to try and use it today, so keep this with you."

I—_Hiraishin? _I gaped. This was a Hiraishin kunai. He had just mastered it recently? But if he was just going try it for the first time today…

Oh, no wonder why everyone had been so uptight the past few days. Minato was going to field test an unknown technique and everyone knew that if things went sideways we'd be losing an extremely skilled ninja. I had no idea who could lead us if he died here, so it was a very well-founded fear.

"Suzu-chan?" Minato was waving a hand in front of my face, looking mildly concerned. I mentally slapped myself. God, I _had _to stop doing that while people were talking to me…

"Just be careful," I mumbled, tucking my cousin's soon-to-be-signature kunai into my belt pouch. "I… I don't think I'll be able to make it back home without you." God knew I how easily it would be to slaughter me if I was alone.

"I will take down any Iwa ninja who so much as looks at you," Minato vowed, putting a hand on my head and pulling me forward until our foreheads touched. "It's my responsibility to take care of my precious people. I will never allow myself to die when others are depending on me."

That... was possibly the most touching thing someone had ever said to me. I felt my eyes begin to water. Lucky indeed—I didn't deserve that kind of unflinching love. I found myself unable to form words, so I just threw myself at him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and gave a giant squeeze.

If I had this kind of person at my back, there was no way I would be dying today.

Minato let out a warm chuckle and hugged me back before drawing back and motioning for me to follow him. We headed to to entrance of the shelter, where our remaining comrades were waiting.

"Are you sure about this?" a dark-haired man asked. Minato just nodded.

We exited the base, climbing up some roughly-made stairs. When everyone was out, the same ninjas who had created the shelter collapsed it with another jutsu, and the genjutsu users let up their protection.

"Everyone, you know what to do," my cousin said, meeting eyes with every person in the group. "We've all done our best to come this far. Let's not fail here."

There was a quiet but firm "yes" as everyone did a last minute equipment check before gearing up to go. Because I couldn't tree-hop fast enough to keep us with everyone in the group, I ended up riding on Minato's back as we made our way to clearer ground. It wouldn't be long before the Iwa ninja found us.

* * *

When the fight started, I'd immediately ducked away behind a large boulder. I wasn't nearly so stupid as to think I'd be able to hold my own out there. There was nothing to be ashamed about in hiding if you're doing it strategically, after all. I would only be a distraction to my comrades out there.

I didn't have any part in setting up Minato's kunai, but judging by the immediate panic that sprang up in the enemy ranks, my fellow Leaf ninja had accomplished what they had set out to do. After ten minutes of listening to the dull roar of combat, I worked up the courage to peek out of my hiding spot; there was a veritable carpet of Iwa-nin lying on the ground, pools of red blood seeping out from under each of them. I briefly saw a snatch of yellow before another cluster of ninja toppled over.

I swallowed, both thoroughly awed and just slightly disturbed. That... That wasn't a fight. That was a massacre. I stood watching in a dazed stupor, completely blown away by the sheer amount of carnage that met my eyes. I couldn't have torn my eyes away even if I tried.

Fifth mistake.

Even if he was probably the world's greatest badass, I'd known right from the start Minato couldn't possibly keep every single enemy ninja off me without withdrawing from the fight completely. That was the only thing that saved me when I stopped gaping long enough to look up and see a Chuunin speeding through the air right toward me, a hail of metal raining down in front of him. I threw myself into a panicked roll, barely dodging, and got ready to run like a bunny.

I was _not_ ready for the hand that shot out of the dirt and grabbed my wrist.

It's a painful thing, having your arm yanked into ground while you're in the midst of a full-body evasive maneuver, a maneuver that you had put all of your momentum into. I let out a pained cry, feeling my muscles strain, feeling the grind of the bones in my shoulder scraping against each other in a type of contact that was never meant to be. But it was nothing compared to what followed.

So, yeah, have any of you guys ever had your arm crushed? No? Well, then let me just tell you now: _Worst. Thing. Ever._

Iwa ninja are just too goddamn crafty. Minato was tearing through their ranks, massacring them ten, twenty, maybe even thirty at time for every five secondshe was out there, and they needed him to _stop_ before they were utterly decimated. So what do they do? They look around, see a tiny little blond kid who couldn't possibly _not _be related to their assailant, correctly deduce that he would come flying to help her, and then they make her _wail_ like she's dying a horrible, horrible death.

Too bad they didn't account for the fact that that would only double his battle fury.

The air had just left my chest when Minato arrived in a blaze of bloody glory, putting knives through my attackers' heads like it was nobody's business. He was still halfway through a leap, the blood from his last kill still in the process of flying off his fingers, as my attackers fell to the ground in a spray of gore.

I collapsed in a heap, knees completely giving way as my vision lit up like a New Year's firework special.

"_Fuck!_" the hoarse expletive tore from my throat before I could help myself. Searing pain tore up my arm; I smashed my other fist into the ground and let out an unrestrained scream, pulling myself to my knees and trying to find a position that didn't send my shoulder-deep arm into excruciating, torturous pain.

"Suzu!" Minato grabbed my uninjured arm as I let out another wordless yell of utter agony, feeling tears begin to stream down my face. Even the deafening noise of the battlefield around us was overpowered by the sheer torment of it.

"Don't move, don't," he told me urgently, withdrawing his arm to run through a set of hand seals at lightning speed. He slammed his hands into the ground, which immediately turned to mush under his palms; he leaned over and quickly but carefully extracted me from the dirt.

"Don't look at it," he said, bracing my back against his chest, hand slick with blood as it shot up to cover my eyes. His voice was grim.

I let out a sob in response. Oh, God, it hurt.

"Harada, I'm withdrawing," Minato informed some person nearby, tone clipped. He must have gotten whatever approval he needed, because in the very next second I was being laid down on a smooth surface, some place where the air was cool and smelt of disinfectant. It was still dark; he still hadn't removed his hand.

"Mina—oh my God! What the _hell_—?"

"It was crushed and she needs help, _now,_" my cousin cut in tightly. The grip around my fingers tightened.

A short gasp. "We—we'll get into her surgery right away!" came the frantic reply, followed by the sound of metal clanging.

"Tohru! Come here, now!" a voice shouted.

"Grab the stabiliser seals!" another demanded.

"Are the clamps clean?!"

"Someone hurry up and put the poor kid out!"

The blackness blocking my sight withdrew for a short moment. Minato's face appeared, and through the tears and constant bursts of light searing across my vision, I latched onto the sight of those deep blue eyes, eyes that welled with strength and intelligence and fierce protective fury.

"We've got you," he murmured as a mask was put over my face.

* * *

**A/N: ...So, yeah. That's a thing.**

**Someone recently pointed out to me the improbability of Suzu so handily defeating a former Chuunin like Itsuki. To that, I ask you to consider the fact that the narrator of this story, while decently perceptive, is sometimes a little dense. So while it could just be that Suzu won through her own strong conviction, it's also entirely possible that someone was testing her and went easy… even if he hadn't _quite _anticipated the kick to the balls. But who knows?**

**(And besides, any kid who thinks running around the shopping district with a hood and nose-high collar is stealthy is just delusional.)**

**In other news, this story was recently added to the Worthwhile SIs community. I am so honored. Really, it's incredible that people are actually paying attention to this one little story floating out in a sea of self-inserts. Thank you so much.**

**Cheers, **

**Eiruiel**


	6. Age 9: Aftermath

**Published: 7/30/2014**

**Edited: 8/3/2014 to tweak wartime Chuunin promotion requirements.**

* * *

**Chapter 5: Age 9: Aftermath**

"_These were probably some of the worst days of my life.__"_

_"I know."_

_"I... regret a lot of the things I did back then."_

"_...I do too. I'm sorry."_

"_No… I'm the one who should apologize. I know I wasn't the only one who was suffering back then. You were too."_

* * *

"How are you doing?"

I blinked as a warm can of coffee was placed in front of me. I put my book down and picked it up with my right hand, smiling when I saw the tab had been popped for me.

"Where did you get these?" I asked as Minato sat down across from me, his own drink in hand. He smiled.

"Auntie Reiko sent them," he informed before taking a sip. I followed suit, relishing the taste of something that had actual _flavor_. A month on goopy mission rations left the palate wanting for many things... a bit of pepper being one of them. Or maybe even just some salt, that would help.

"How is she?" I asked, sitting back and letting out a contented sigh. It had a been a peaceful day today—just keeping up the camp, maintaining weapons, that sort of thing. It had gotten very quiet after Minato's Yellow Flash debut three weeks ago. Not that I blamed them; I'd be scared to send anyone within a thousand miles of him after that slaughter.

"Worried," was the frowning reply. "She's not going to rest until Uncle gets his hands on you himself."

"But they've fixed it wonderfully," I protested, looking down at the sling where my bandaged arm was resting. "It doesn't even hurt now."

In truth, it was lucky that I'd managed to keep my arm at all. If Minato hadn't immediately rushed me to the field hospital, the medics had told me, they would have had to cut it off. The only reason they had been able to save it was because they'd gotten to me literally seconds after it had happened. Personally, I was in awe that they'd managed to fix it at all. Iryou-ninjutsu… it was amazing what these guys could do with it. Since my arrival here I had witnessed gashes and open wounds stretching out two and a half feet across close up in a matter of minutes. And that was to say nothing of the three limbs that I had seen being reattached in the following hours. I already knew that chakra was capable of amazing things, but man… chakra was capable of amazing things.

Minato's face twisted contritely. "Suzu, I am so sorry—" he began.

"It's fine," I reassured him for the umpteenth time, faintly resisting the urge to roll my eyes. It had been very sweet of him to apologize the first couple times, but now, after three weeks of this… not so much. "It's not your fault."

"But I promised I'd keep them away from you." He sulked, scuffing his heel in the dirt almost childishly. I smiled. That was the thing with Minato; he was a total perfectionist. Just keeping me alive wasn't enough, apparently. In his mind, I should have come out with not a single scratch.

"Because of you, I was saved from being disabled for the rest of my life," I pointed out, not mentioning the fact that I wouldn't be even be alive to be disabled if he hadn't been around. "Anyway, how's everyone else doing?"

I had been sending my regards home through Minato for the past three weeks, being obviously incapable of writing at the moment. It was supremely irritating; I resolved to start working on ambidexterity as soon as possible.

"They're fine." Minato sighed at my apparently feeble consolation before pulling out a thin scroll from his belt pouch and unrolling it. "Let's see… Shiori took her field medic exam and passed last week. Jinta's just come back from his courier mission. Hiroto lost a tooth. Tenrou and Heiwako got in trouble again… they never learn, do they?"

"Evidently not," I laughed at that. Even after countless _training sessions _with Auntie, did they still not get it? Or maybe they just didn't care...

"Oh, and she mentioned your teammate Akihiko has stopped by several times already," Minato added. "He slept over the entirety of his first week back."

"That sounds like something he would do." I smiled, feeling a bit wistful at the thought of my best friends. This was the first time in our lives we'd ever been separated for this long.

"Is he alright?" I asked. Yoshiya was clever enough not to get in over his head, but Akihiko would charge straight in without a second thought if he thought he could get away with it.

"He's perfectly fine," my cousin assured me. "She wrote here that he has something he desperately needs to tell you, but she didn't say what."

I raised my eyebrows at that. Something he desperately needed to tell me? I had no idea…

"Anyway, I told her we'll be home next week, and she says she'll cook a mountain of food for us when we get back." Minato grinned hugely, obviously anticipating a the opportunity to eat like a pig. I didn't know what it was with men around here, but they ate like they were ten times their actual size. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that they were ninjas? Now that I thought about, even though I was a girl I _had _been eating a ton more since becoming a Genin...

"You're such a freeloader," I snorted, though I was secretly glad to know I would be eating real food soon. Thank God. "You don't even technically live at the House anymore but you're always there eating our food anyway."

Minato had bought his own one-story home and moved to the east edge of the compound before he'd been deployed, but that had done nothing whatsoever to prevent him from invading the House on a daily basis. I suspected that he just didn't want to cook for himself.

"It's lonely to eat meals on your own," Minato protested. "Besides, I know you guys like having me around—Haruka cried buckets when she found out I was moving out. Think of how much it'd break her heart if I didn't come visit."

"Do you think I'll be out of this by the time we get back?" I asked instead of replying to that, motioning to my sling. "It makes it look worse than it really is at this point." Minato paused and considered me thoughtfully.

"The scarring's faded quite a bit, so they'll probably let you take off the bandages today or tomorrow," he said at a length. "They'll want to keep it immobile a little while longer, though."

"Physical therapy's gonna be great with this," I sighed glumly. "Well, at least I'll be motivated to get my dominant hand back in working order..."

"Calligraphy will probably be beyond you for a while, but you might be able to pester them into letting you write with a pen," Minato suggested. "Give it a shot when you see them tomorrow."

I quirked a brow. "If you think pestering the medics is a good idea," I said with a shrug. Most shinobi seemed to have an almost pathological aversion to any and all things pertaining to medicine, but I honestly was happy to do whatever the doctors told me. No way was I going to risk any bit of my health ever by ignoring a professional.

We passed the evening in easy conversation before turning in for the night. The next day I was permitted to remove my bandages, just as Minato predicted. I requested—nicely—to allowed to try writing, to which the medics allowed so long as I didn't strain too hard. The days before the official end of Minato's rotation blended together in a blur of reading, trying to write, eating mission goop, and sleeping. There was a small scare when the camp was put on high alert after an Iwa scout was spotted, but nothing ever came of it. Soon Minato and I were packed and ready to head home.

It would have taken a week for us to arrive if we'd gone at my pace, but Minato gave me piggybacks whenever I tired, so our time in transit was cut down to five days instead. Several others were returning with us, so we moved a bit more slowly as a rule of thumb. I was pretty sure if he'd been on his own it would have taken Minato three days tops.

I had been dozing slightly with my face in his shoulder when he woke me with a wiggle and told me we'd arrived. I blinked and shifted, looking around his head at the gates. Several people, both ninja and civilian, were crowded around waiting for their loved ones.

"I think I see Uncle," Minato said, pointing to a speck of yellow in a sea of brown and black heads. He jumped down from his branch and bounded over to him, weaving through the masses easily. I sat up straight and peered over his head to try and get a glimpse of Uncle Souhei.

"Uncle!" Minato grinned when he slid to a stop in front of our bespectacled father figure. Uncle Souhei smiled at the sight of us and immediately gathered us in a hug, which was actually _really _unusual—Uncle Souhei was not the touchy type.

"I'm glad to see you two back," he told us, squeezing Minato's shoulder and reaching up to plant a kiss on my forehead. I blushed a bit. "We were worried."

"But we're here now, and we're alright," Minato assured him. "Right, Suzu?"

"Right," I agreed, giving my best smile. Uncle Souhei's expression sobered; he regarded me with a look at was almost… sad.

"That's good," he murmured, putting a hand on both of our heads and looking at us both with the kind of face only parents could make. My eyes began to water a bit; I just about melted from all of the love I felt right then.

We headed back to the House via roof-hopping. I enjoyed the view of the village from my perch on Minato's back, happy to see such familiar sights after a long, long time away. I could only imagine how Minato felt, having been gone for eleven more months than me. After spending so many hours submerged in constant tension, warily waiting for the next bomb to fall, to breathe in the peaceful Leaf Village air was positively cathartic. We both let out a long sigh at the same time, making Uncle Souhei smile when we glanced at each other with a laugh.

Minato finally set me down when we arrived in front of the House, neither of us wanting to alarm Auntie Reiko into thinking I'd been rendered incapable of walking, too. According to Uncle Souhei she'd been on pins and needles ever since my due date passed and I hadn't returned.

Sliding the door open, Uncle let us in first before calling out a short _tadaima_. Auntie Reiko was before us in a heartbeat, lip aquiver. No words were exchanged as she swept me right off the ground in a bone crushing hug, though she was very careful not to catch my arms in it. She only spared an arm for Minato after she'd squeezed me half to death.

"I was worried," she murmured into my hair. I found myself tearing up again for the second time that day as I hugged her back, fighting back the sniffles.

"Thank you for bringing her home, Minato," Uncle said quietly, putting a hand on my cousin's shoulder. Minato just smiled.

We all took a moment to compose ourselves before exiting the genkan and entering the House proper. Several of our cousins were gathered in the sitting doing various different tasks, reading and writing, talking and playing.

A hush fell when Minato and I appeared in the doorway. Then…

"Suzu-neechan! Minato-niichan!" Haruka shrieked, hauling herself up off the floor before charging at us, her little pigtails bouncing as she ran. Minato laughed and caught the little girl when she threw herself at him. Everyone got up and crowded around us.

It was good to be home.

* * *

In the next few days I spent a lot of time just soaking in the attention from my family, eating popsicles and daydreaming after I went to the requisite physical therapy sessions at the hospital. A lot of my younger cousins spent an absurd amount of time poking my arm—which was finally out of its sling—and tracing the light webs of scar tissue with fascination in their eyes. Tenrou and Jinta thought it was "wicked cool," though I could tell the girls were a little frightened. That was fair enough, though. Even though my arm had only gone under a minimal change in appearance—you could only see something was wrong with it if you were staring really hard—it still served as a very real reminder that disfiguring injuries did happen, and that they happened to anyone, even little girls.

Akihiko spent a lot time at the House, too. Just seconds after we'd arrived home he had come charging through the door like there was a herd of rabid buffalo chasing after him. Even though he was only slightly taller than me he had picked me up and swung me around and blathered _oh it's so great you're back _and _I was really worried _and _oh my God by the way you should know!_

After prying him off me and relocating to the veranda overlooking the yard with ice cream bars in hand, Akihiko elaborated: Apparently, while he had been away, he had managed to unravel a huge attack. I didn't understand his explanation completely because it was punctuated with a lot of _boom _and _fwashafwuu_ sound effects, but from what I could tell he had noticed a disturbed patch of ground and had ended up unearthing a huge network of explosive tags. Half of his squad ended up getting blown up and the Iwa ninja behind it had to spring the trap before they were fully prepared, and since Akihiko had already been on the scene kicking enemy mooks off of cliffs when the responders from the fort they were delivering supplies for arrived, they had assumed he was one of the Chuunin they had heard was coming. He apparently had just rolled with it and ended up putting together an attack plan that drove off the enemy ninja. The fort personnel had been so shocked to find out he was a Genin that he got treated with a unanimous field promotion; when he came back to the village he had handed in no less than seven letters of rec nominating him to become a wartime Chuunin.

"You're lying," I accused flatly. "It hasn't even been half a year since we graduated. There has to be some sort of rule against that."

"No, I'm not!" Akihiko protested. "It's allowed! There's some sort of war clause thing that waives the Chuunin Exam requirement if enough criteria is met! Or something like that."

I shook my head. "Uncle, are you hearing this?" I asked of Uncle Souhei, who was sitting nearby and feeding one of the babies. He looked up and raised an eyebrow at me.

"Section three of the Emergency Wartime Powers of the Armed Forces Bill: Let those who are registered shinobi of the Leaf receive whatever rise in rank deemed necessary by the Board if the follow criteria are met: at least one independent instance of combat displaying exemplary skill and judgement, a letter of recommendation confirming the validity of this instance, a minimum of four separate nominations, and a passing score on a test of proficiency administered according to the standards listed in Section 4, clause C1," he recited.

..._What? _I felt my ice cream slip through my fingers; it landed with a splat on my lap.

"Ooh, ooh, yeah! The proficiency test, I took that last week!" Akihiko said eagerly. "It was a good test because there wasn't any writing or anything, they just took me out to a field and had me do some exercises and a simulation mission. I'm really awesome at those kinds of tests."

"I… you're serious?" I asked weakly. But… there was no way in hell they made Akihiko a Chuunin. I mean, I knew he was a good fighter, and I knew the standards for promotion were more lax during times of war, but… _Akihiko_? As a _Chuunin_? The brute-force smack-it-til-it's-fixed guy?

"Of course I am." Akihiko crossed his arms and grinned triumphantly. "I got my own flak jacket and everything. I'm just not wearing it right now."

I looked down and picked up my ice cream, which was now covered in bits of cotton and hair. Akihiko was promoted to Chuunin on his first mission? How was that _possible?_ He had just… what, just jumped into action? He didn't freeze up or get worried? He didn't… panic?

"That's… really amazing," I mumbled, staring at my bare feet as I wrapped the ice cream bar in its previously discarded plastic sleeve. I would have never expected that from him. "What did Yoshiya say?"

There was a brief silence. I looked up and saw Akihiko's smiling face melt into a more troubled expression.

"He's not back yet," he said.

"Oh." I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. "I… he probably just got delayed like I did, then, didn't he?" I asked. For some reason the words seemed a bit hollow, even to my ears. Still, there was no cause for worry, was there? Yoshiya was smart. I knew that already—he wouldn't get in over his head. If something happened, if he got attacked, it would be okay. Akihiko had been able to keep a cool head, so Yoshiya could do the same... Those two, however different, were equally skilled and equally clever.

Akihiko just looked away.

"Yeah," he said.

* * *

Saturday, two in the afternoon. Auntie Reiko was out supervising a House field trip to the annual ninjutsu exhibition; almost everyone was gone except for Uncle Souhei and the babies. The yard was totally empty and perfect for training.

Double checking my gloves and making sure the cloth covered my fingers up to the base of my nails—they were longer than the standard tipless gloves—I picked up the coil of wire next to me and stood up, cutting two lengths. Since it had been nearly a month and a half since I had last done this and I wasn't quite sure how my arm was going to hold up, I decided to attach blunted weights instead of shuriken to the ends.

Wrapping the wire around my fingers and taking a deep breath, I swung my right arm out, then my left. I spent a few minutes just getting a feel for the technique again, keeping the weights swinging in a synchronized arcs. After I was sure I wouldn't accidentally smack myself in the head, I began to go into a couple of warm-up maneuvers, crossing my arms and changing positions, ducking under and jumping over the wires in a strange parody of double dutch. It probably looked silly, but learning to move around your wires was essential if you ever wanted to become combat worthy with them.

A lot of my family members wondered why I was so fixed on going into the wire branch of shurikenjutsu. For regular people—that is, anyone who wasn't an Uchiha—its uses were extremely limited. Most non-Sharingan users couldn't utilize more than two lines per hand, and most of the time the ended up swinging them around like what basically amounted to weaker and less effective flails. Wires, they said, just took too much precision for a regular person to handle.

I practiced snagging things for a while, tree branches and little rods I kicked into the air, maybe even the occasional squirrel. There was something I wanted to try with this move, but I had never done it for fear of slicing myself into bits. Today, though, I felt reckless. I had just found out the jock of my friend group was already jumping up the ranks, after all; of _course _I wanted to advance too. Nothing would change if I just kept on the way I was now.

Dropping the wire in my right hand, I returned to swinging the one in my left to a lazy loop. Then I concentrated and began molding chakra, moving it through my arm before letting it seep into the wire. Then I formed the two currents needed for chakra flow; a familiar hum filled the air next to me.

Okay, kids, here is today's aesop: _Do not experiment with techniques you haven't fully thought through_. Or, for that matter, _Don't try mixing techniques you haven't fully mastered. _Though I could use chakra flow well enough to cut things, I was far from an expert. And that went doubly so for wires.

Still, driven by ambition, I tossed one of my light metal rods into the air and swung my arm out as though I was going to catch it like I always did. The wire did wrap around it. Then it sliced right through it.

I let out a pleased gasp, happy to see my idea had worked. That only lasted for a second, though, because then that lovely cutting wire came hurtling right back at me. I fumblingly tried to control the return swing, but the angle was wrong, and it was going too fast for me to adjust—there wasn't the usual resistance this time. I had cut something, not caught it. The wire wasn't dragging anything with it. I frantically began letting the end wrapped around my finger unravel, but it was too late for that.

Just then, three shuriken shot out from nowhere, intercepting the line and neatly severing it into four harmless little pieces. The bit still attached to my hand fluttered in the air for a bit before settling lightly on my skin and leaving an angry red welt. I let out a hiss and cut the chakra.

"That," Uncle Souhei said, suddenly looming over me, "was very, _very _stupid, Misuzu."

I looked up with wide eyes and swallowed. Uh oh. Full name.

"Do you understand what just happened?" he asked lowly, seizing my wrist and pointing to the tiny line the wire had left. His eyeglasses glinted dangerously in the sunlight. "Thank the gods _right now_ that this is the only wound you got. You could have just _decapitated _yourself."

I let out a tiny squeak. Did he just say—_decapitate_?

"There is a reason no one around here but the Uchiha uses chakra flow with wires," he informed, expression tight. "I thought that was the first thing you learned about wire shurikenjutsu: _the lines are volatile_. It takes a _slight breeze _to alter its course, even when weighted. Why would you give something you can't control the ability to slice through nearly any substance?" he asked. "Are you _intentionally _trying to kill yourself?"

"I-I," I stuttered, dumbfounded. "I didn't—I didn't think—"

_Fwap_. I cringed as a thin switch appeared in his hand and slapped onto my wrist, right over the cut.

"Ninjas must _always _think," Uncle cut in sharply, blue eyes like chips of ice. I gulped and nodded rapidly, feeling like I was seconds away from wetting myself. _This _was the reason why Auntie Reiko was usually in charge of punishments—Uncle Souhei was damn scary when he was mad.

"I understand," I said smally, hunching my shoulders and biting my lip. Uncle maintained the severity in his expression for a second longer before letting out a sigh, pushing his glasses up and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"Just be more careful, Suzu," he said, dropping his arms and fixing me with a disappointed look. "That was no joke."

"I didn't know that using chakra flow and wires was bad," I mumbled at the ground. "I thought… it would be clever. You could use it to cut things from far away without having to use ninjutsu."

"Yes, many people think the same," Uncle Souhei agreed, motioning for me to follow him. We went back towards the house and sat down on the veranda, where he picked up a piece of wire and held it up. It swayed gently, bending in whichever direction the wind pulled it.

"Civilians often tell their children not to play with sharp knives," Uncle told me softly as we watched the little steel string dancing with the breeze. "Of course, as a ninja clan, we let our kids run around with knives all the time. But the principle of it still applies—don't let the young and foolish mess around with tools, however useful they are, that can hurt them."

I flushed and looked down at my lap.

"Suzu. Where did you learn chakra flow?"

I bit my lip and wondered how to answer that. In a tree at the park four years ago? By watching a fictional story about ninja and remembering the explanation of it given in one of the episodes?

"I found it out by accident," I finally said, settling on a half-truth. Half-truths were the best lies. "When I was doing the leaf-sticking exercise."

Uncle raised an eyebrow. "You discovered chakra flow on your forehead?"

"No," I mumbled, plucking a piece of grass and sticking it to my palm. "I did it like this." I coated my other hand and slapped it on top; the grass shot out and embedded itself in a tree across the yard.

Uncle Souhei stared at it. Then he stared at me.

"You've been playing with this for a while, haven't you," he said more than asked, tone flat.

"When I was five," I informed. "That was the first time I did it."

Uncle Souhei's gaze sharpened as though I had said something more significant than it actually was. He looked down at me with a calculating gaze; I could practically see the gears whirring in his head.

A few moments of silence passed. I began to fidget uncomfortably under his gaze. Then, after what seemed like a lifetime of waiting, he sighed and looked away. When he turned his head back to me it seemed like he was looking at me like I was a whole different person. A small, almost sad smile spread across his face before he held up with wire.

"Funny thing about chakra flow," he began, looping it around his index finger. "If you do it right…"

The wire lit up and he yanked. His finger stayed in place.

"...You'll never cut yourself." He smirked.

"What?" I demanded, astounded. "But—how can—if you can do _that, _why aren't there a million wire masters running around slicing through things like cheese?"

Uncle Souhei shrugged. "Well, this is a technique you can only learn as a child. It requires your chakra pathways to have a flexibility that just can't be achieved as an adult. But if you've already got down the basics of chakra flow as a child, well…" He raised an eyebrow.

My jaw dropped. Was he saying what I thought he was saying?

"When Namikazes turn out masters they tend to be in odd places," he informed nonchalantly, twirling the steel thread between his thumb and forefinger. "Barrier ninjutsu, archery… more recently we've got someone trying his hand at fuuinjutsu. I guess it wouldn't be impossible to have a wire master, too."

"Teach me!" I all but begged, latching onto his arm. "_Please!_"

Uncle Souhei laughed and handed me the wire.

It was a while before I realized that if he knew how to use chakra flow without cutting himself, he must've learned it as a child, too.

* * *

We were halfway through dinner when someone came flying through the open window in the kitchen. There was a crash, followed by the sound of pots and pans clanging on the ground. Everyone stopped with food halfway in their mouths, glancing at each other and then toward the kitchen doorway as more racket followed.

"Suzu!" Akihiko appeared in the doorway, sweating and panting, holding a saucepan in one hand. I stared; he hastily shoved it onto the counter behind the doorway.

"Yoshiya's back," he informed, breathing heavily. I gasped and dropped my chopsticks, shooting to my feet.

"Really?" I exclaimed, grinning widely. "That's great! Is he—"

Akihiko looked at me. I stopped mid-sentence and quieted, taking in the stiffness of his posture, the hard set of his mouth, the fear in his widened eyes—

"Suzu!" Minato exclaimed as I jerked away from the table and darted forward, feeling the blood drain from my face. Akihiko turned and sprinted away, back through the kitchen and out the window he came. I ran after him, grabbing the doorframe as I turned before clearing the kitchen and shooting out the window in a single leap.

Akihiko grabbed my wrist as soon as I landed. We only took a second to inhale before we were off, hurtling through the village streets like a pair of maniacs. Passersby shouted as we tore past them, knocking over whoever was unfortunate enough to be in our way, chakra boosting us to nearly shunshin speeds.

The run to Konoha General took both a lifetime and a few seconds. We exploded into the lobby, startling the few people who were still about; Akihiko ran up to the receptionist and demanded to know where Yoshiya Miyazawa was. When the lady at the desk tried to say something about _still in surgery _and _only family_ he slammed his hands onto the counter and ground out slowly, "_Where—is—he?_"

As soon as the woman had spoken the room number Akihiko seized my hand once more. He dragged me down some hallway at a slightly more controlled brisk walk, grip tightening painfully around my fingers. I swallowed, at this point feeling a bit frightened not because of Yoshiya, but Akihiko—I had never seen him like this.

When we arrived outside of the OR where our teammate was, no one but a lone brown-haired Chuunin was standing there. He was shirtless, reddening bandages wrapped all around his middle, neck bent as he stared at the ground; he was clinging to an IV stand with with left hand. Akihiko ran up to him.

"Do you know what's wrong with Yoshiya?" he asked between huge gulps of air, breathlessly squeezing the life out of my hand. I bit my lip, feeling my own knuckles whiten over his. The Chuunin started and looked down at us, having evidently been lost in his own thoughts.

"He—he was stabbed. In the stomach," the Chuunin murmured, one hand holding his side as he turned to face us. "I—he was the only one I managed to grab after they attacked us."

"Did… did you guys accidentally end up on the front lines, too?" I asked quietly, already dreading the answer. The Chuunin looked at me, eyes zeroing in on my left arm. Slowly, he nodded.

"Where did they get him?" Akihiko wanted to know. "How deep was it? What did the medics say?"

"I… there was an exit wound. Through his back," the Chuunin said, furrowing his brow before shrugging helplessly. "That's all I've got, though. I passed out when I got to the gate, so I don't really…"

Akihiko's mouth opened. Sensing an incoming torrent of abuse, I quickly tugged him over to the wall, gripping his arm with my other hand before sinking to the floor, pulling us both down into sitting positions.

"Let's just wait here," I murmured anxiously as I released his arm but continued to hold his hand. Akihiko looked at me, closed his mouth, and then just brought his knees up before wordlessly burying his face in his arm.

Minutes ticked into hours as we sat there unmoving. Long after my behind had gone numb and Akihiko's head had lolled limply onto my shoulder, we were still waiting. In the privacy of the empty hallway—the Chuunin had left a while ago—I felt tears begin to well up in my eyes.

There was no way that they were still working on him. Could surgeries even last that long? Were they actually still trying or had they given up and just not come out to tell us? I felt myself begin to hiccup as all rational thought left me.

That night, I remembered thinking I should have been dying as well. I had gotten away from the war unscathed, but Yoshiya hadn't—why was that? Why was I okay when he was not? I went out there and came back with a couple of lines on my arm; he came back with a hole in his gut. How was that _fair?_

"Suzu!" a familiar voice exclaimed from down the hall. "There you are…"

Minato ended up carrying us both back to the House, Akihiko in his arms and me on his back. I cried into his shirt the whole way, clutching his shoulders and gasping _it's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair_…

When we got back, Akihiko was put in a spare futon in the boys' room. I refused to go bed until Auntie promised she would wake me up the second we had news, and even then after I had gotten under the covers I tossed and turned and occasionally sobbed into my pillow. It was incredible I managed not to wake anybody else up.

That night was one of the longest in my life.

* * *

**A/N: I don't like the first scene with Akihiko. It's short and it's awkward and it kills the flow of the chapter, but I couldn't find another way to put it in. Sorry. But hey, nice chunk of Souhei today!**

**On another note, Glory has hit one thousand views. That is incredible beyond words. Thank you all so much for your support. It pains me to tell you all updates are about to slow significantly—school is starting for me soon and I have a lot of summer assignments to get working on. Just know that I have a lot planned for this story and that I still am very much writing it! Just... not as quickly anymore.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	7. Age 9: Emptiness

**Published: 8/2/2014**

* * *

**Chapter 6: Age 9: Emptiness**

_There are no words to say about this chapter of my life._

* * *

"Hey, lazy butt, wake up!"

I collided with my bedroom floor and had a single thought: How the hell did Akihiko get in this time?

"West side, second floor, there's a loose panel next to the storage room window," my teammate explained impatiently. "Now stop lying around and get ready! Yoshiya's due home any minute now!"

I was up in a heartbeat, yanking my pajama shirt off and chucking it at his face, grabbing my clothes off the dresser and launching myself into the bathroom. I was cleaned and dressed in a matter of seconds.

"Let's go, come on!" I yelled unnecessarily, throwing open my window and jumping out. Akihiko was right behind me; he barely remembered to shut it behind him in his haste. We raced to the eastern gate and arrived in a massive cloud of dust and leaves, having kicked up a storm with our barely-controlled shunshins.

The Chuunin gatekeepers took one look at us and laughed knowingly.

"The infamous Mudstorm Trio's due for a reunion, I take it?" the older one called, smiling. Akihiko spun and shook a fist at him, dust settling in his hair.

"That name is so unbelievably lame! I don't know where you people got that whole Mudstorm thing from, but you better knock it off! " he threatened.

"Please, you three are famous for turning any landscape you visit into a splattered pit of ooze," the other Chuunin retorted. "You can't be anything but the Mudstorm Trio."

"Yoshiya!" I called, ignoring the squabble next to me in favor of waving my arm wildly as a pinprick of color appeared in the distance. Akihiko whirled around, face lighting up; the speck grew exponentially larger and larger until suddenly we were being crushed in a giant hug, our third and final teammate's arms squeezing us together until we had to cry mercy.

"Welcome home!" I grinned hugely, panting slightly, as Yoshiya released us. He grinned back.

"What the hell took you so long? You're a day away from the Chuunin Exams' registration deadline!" Akihiko exclaimed, delivering a punch to his best friend's shoulder. "Your kids would have killed you if they missed a promotion again."

"Ow! Knock it off, you stupid taijutsu freak, that hurts," Yoshiya scowled, shoving his friend and rubbing his arm defensively. "And I'd like to see you do better! Especially when you have trouble magnets like mine…"

"Here, I brought the forms," I told him, withdrawing the scroll I'd shoved into my supply pouch and handing it to him. Yoshiya immediately lit up again.

"Thanks, Suzu," he said warmly, throwing an arm around my shoulder in a half-hug. "Are we all still on for dinner at Moritake's tonight?" he asked.

"Ooh! I almost forgot about that!" Akihiko jumped and looked to me eagerly. "Are we?"

"Of course," I scoffed, pretending to be offended as I crossed my arms. "Do you think I would forget?"

"Naw," Yoshiya laughed, knocking his head gently against mine. "You were always the most responsible out of the three of us."

"So true, that," Akihiko agreed. Then he paused. "Well, except for that time… oh God, remember that thing at the capital? With the squirrel?"

Just the thought of it made me burst out laughing. "Niichan's face when we told him the daimyo was under attack by a rodent!"

Akihiko and I melted into riotous guffaws. Yoshiya smiled and turned to his students, who were still flagging on the horizon.

"Hey, you three!" he hollered. "I'm not getting any younger! If you don't speed it up, I might forget to enter you in the Chuunin Exams!"

A distant shout of dismay met our ears.

"You are a cruel and unusual master, my friend," I told him as solemnly as I could, trying to smother another fit of hysterics and failing; the three of us were in tears before long. We might have gone a bit overboard laughing at nothing, but that was okay, wasn't it? We hadn't seen one another in a long time, and nothing was better to celebrate a reunion than sharing a good laugh with your best friends.

"Suzu."

I blinked as a sudden wave of disorientation hit me. Yoshiya and Akihiko twisted and blurred; their voices faded as the dirt below vanished and the blue sky disappeared.

Auntie Reiko was hovering above me, the moon illuminating her figure as she knelt at the side of my futon. Years under the same roof allowed me to read the glint in her eye before coherence had even returned to me.

"He's gone," she said unnecessarily.

I stared dumbly at her, cheeks still wet with mirth, because I had been crying with laughter just a moment ago, hadn't I? Yoshiya had been gone for months on that mission in Tea Country, and we were at the gate joking around, waiting for his Genin to catch up while recollecting the time we saw a squirrel assault the feudal lord—

The air was still and dry, heavy with the resonant silence of deep night. The syncopated rhythm of three pairs of respirating lungs rang out beside me; a distant cicada sounded out a low tone, a line of bass in an invisible nighttime symphony. I shut my eyes again and saw Yoshiya handing three thirteen-year-olds their registration forms for the Chuunin Exams, utterly radiant with pride.

I'd never had a crueler dream in my life.

* * *

The funeral was a small one. People were being killed all the time these days, so there was neither the time nor the resources to make it a huge occasion. Konoha was at war, after all, and the General Forces' cemetery was badly overbooked; we had been told to get out by nine so the next group could come. They had a child to bury, too.

Akihiko and I stood apart from the rest of the attendees, unable to look anyone in the eye, not even each other. We said nothing when we first arrived; we were wordless when they shovelled the dirt; we departed in silence when the day's ninth hour came. I ignored any attempts at conversation my family members made and went off into the village to be on my lonesome instead.

I spent a few hours at the park, sullenly kicking on the swing and giving death glares to anyone who tried to come near me. It hurt to think too much, so I tried not to, but every time I began to unwind my thoughts would drift swords and blood and warm smiles—

I cried a lot, too. It gave me a headache, but I think that was more from dehydration than anything. I hadn't eaten at all today, either, but I didn't really care for food at the moment. If my stomach was empty, that was fine. No, it was more than fine—it was fitting. Because inside, I felt nothing.

I felt empty.

It was sunset by the time someone who knew me came by. It was a good thing he found me; I probably would have sat there all night if I'd been left on my own. You don't think about moving around when you're drowning in despair, after all. You only think of trying to keep your head above the water.

"Suzu-chan."

It was a familiar sound, that voice. I slowly lifted my head, turning it to the side; Itsuki Mikawaya was sitting on the swing next to me, hat in his hands, ponytail hanging over his shoulder. I twitched my lips in a sad attempt at a greeting smile before quickly looking away, not wanting to see whatever expression he had on his face. Confusion meant that I would have to explain; pity meant that I would feel worse for myself.

I didn't really put up much resistance when he took my arm and dragged me to my feet. As long as I didn't have to talk, I didn't care what he did. Itsuki seemed to understand because the ensuing walk was one of silence. Eventually we ended up at his fruit store; I was directed to my usual stool while he went off into the back room.

"No dango today," he said when he returned. "Just tea."

"Thanks," I had the presence of mind to mutter when he handed a cup to me. Itsuki shrugged and sat down on the counter, bracing one arm behind him and taking a sip from his drink with the other.

"Look at you on that stool," he suddenly laughed. "I remember when you had to climb to get up there. You've gotten pretty big."

I just stared at him; Itsuki's smile faded. He let out a sigh and put his drink down before leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"Funeral clothes today," he observed, eyes full of knowing. "Friend of yours?"

I couldn't help it—I snorted.

"Friend," I repeated dryly. As if a word like friend could encompass all of the being that had been Yoshiya Miyazawa. "Yeah, sure. Friend… best friend."

"So it was a best friend funeral, was it?" Itsuki asked, smiling with false humor. "Those are great, aren't they? Standing off to the side, not looking anyone in the face, family members awkwardly following you around when you clearly don't want to talk…"

I cracked a smile then. I knew there was a reason why I liked Itsuki; he knew how things were.

"So I haven't seen you around lately," he began, jumping from the subject so smoothly it was like we hadn't been talking previously at all. "Where've you been?"

"Just camping out west, nothing much," I drawled sardonically, grateful for the distraction. "Met some Stone ninja. Real friendly, that lot."

"Oh, yeah, bet they are," Itsuki replied just as wryly. "Gave you a nice arm tattoo, huh? Pretty brave of you to agree to one that big."

"Yeah, well, I didn't get much of a choice on that one." I grimaced, not quite up to joking around about that particular experience just yet. Maybe in a few months… or years.

"Well, they can get pretty pushy, too." Itsuki nodded, easily sliding past the potential mood killer with the skill of a seasoned conversational warrior. "Don't worry, it's not too noticeable. Did you go out there with friends?"

"There were some Chuunin, but they kind of got beheaded," I admitted, pursing my lips. "I was lucky one of my older cousins was around to save me. And that he's insanely good at fighting."

Itsuki's expression sobered.

"You're talking about Minato, aren't you?" he asked. "Minato Namikaze."

I blinked, surprised.

"Yeah, how'd you know?" I queried, bewildered. Itsuki _was_ uncannily perceptive, but that was a pretty unfounded leap of logic even for him.

"Everybody knows." Itsuki shrugged, threading his fingers together. "The Battle of Tatsumi River. They say it was a massacre."

Well, there was no denying that. In the few brief moments I had seen him fighting Minato had been a killing machine. He must've done in a few hundred shinobi at the _least_.

"He was pretty brutal," I confessed. "It was actually… really scary. But he's so nice and goofy at home. I'd never seen him like that before… ever." I mean, it was one thing to know from an anime show that your cousin-big brother was actually a crazily dangerous killer, but after years of watching him do the most mundane things, cleaning floors and listening to him make up ridiculous jutsu names…

"If anyone was destined to lead a double life, it'd be a ninja," Itsuki replied, looking sad. "Don't think of him any differently, okay? I don't know him personally, but I've met enough to people to know it would hurt."

I looked away.

"That's kind of hard," I said quietly. "Because… he was so bloody. He was covered in it."

I had spent a lot of time thinking about that fight. We'd spent a whole month out of Konoha, after all, and when I had been recovering there hadn't been much for me to do besides lie down and rest. I had had lots of free time—and everyone knows that an excess of free time means an excess of brooding.

I wonder how he slept at night, knowing he was drenched in the blood of so many. How did anyone sleep, for that matter, knowing somebody's life was on his hands?

"A lot of the times they don't," Itsuki said, and it took me a moment to realize I had been thinking aloud. Itsuki has a distant look on his face, as though he was remembering something from long ago. I quickly shut my mouth and waited for him to speak—that was always the look he got when he was thinking about his ninja days.

"Hey, listen…" he began, looking more somber than his usual. "This might not mean anything to you yet, but it will before long—I'm certain of that. It won't be long until you're out there killing yourself, you know, so I just wanted to tell you…"

I swallowed and tried to imagine what it was like to be a killer. To be a ninja.

…to be Minato.

"You're going have sleepless nights," Itsuki told me. "They'll come and you can't stop them. Killing or seeing your comrades be killed… the dead are going to come to you at night. But don't run. Don't try to look away."

Itsuki sighed and leaned back again.

"Don't look away," he repeated, "or you'll end up like me."

"End up like you?" I echoed, not sure what that meant. In all of the time I'd known Itsuki he'd been all in all a decent and thoughtful person, helpful and kind. He could be aloof and defensive at times, but who wasn't? Being like him didn't seem like a terribly awful fate…

"Stuck behind a counter peddling fruit to civvies," he explained drolly. "Sitting all day. Reading. Watching. Cooking and eating… remembering… wishing you could be out there fulfilling your dreams. Dreams you can't get to anymore."

Dreams… I looked at my feet.

"I can't be a ninja anymore," Itsuki told me, smiling bitterly. "I wish I could."

"Why can't you?" I asked quietly. In the four years we'd known each other he'd never told me why he'd stopped.

"I'd go insane," Itsuki laughed; it was a raw and bleeding sound. He made the crazy motion, pointing to his head and rotating his finger in a circle. "I've already gone insane once before. That's why they discharged me, and that's why I can never go back to the Forces. I'm too unstable."

"You? Unstable?" I repeated before I could help myself, incredulous. He was one of the most grounded and sharp-witted men I'd ever met in my life. In fact, around here with all of these quirky ninja, people like Itsuki were _ridiculously_ hard to find.

"Oh, trust me, I'm not making it up," Itsuki assured me wryly. "I live a life very, very removed from all of my triggers and stressors. I've improved a lot, but… well, you wouldn't have liked to see me in proximity to a training field back then. I remember there being days when even the sound of metal clanging was enough to set me off."

"Should I stop asking you about all of this ninja stuff?" I asked, alarmed. I'd never expected mental illness to be the cause behind Itsuki's "retirement." It was extremely discomfiting to know I had been pestering him for the story for years now that I knew.

"Don't worry, I don't mind." Itsuki smiled sadly. "In a way, you've been strangely therapeutic for me."

I just shut my mouth and frowned worriedly.

"Anyway, the point is—well, whether it's someone you killed or someone you know who's died, you'll be bothered. Deeply. But you just need to… Oh, I don't know how to say it. Just… take your night scares when they come and remember that there are living people to see in the morning. Don't forget there are people around you." Itsuki shrugged awkwardly. "…Yeah. That's my lesson for the day. Just look forward to the daytime."

We dropped into silence; I looked outside and saw that dusk had long since faded into darkness. Stars were blinking in the sky, halfway shadowed by thin wisps of clouds.

I turned my head away and stared into my tea; a brown-tinted reflection of me stared back, distorting as the liquid sloshed and rippled. It was odd—I didn't look at myself often, and sometimes I found it strange to see my own face, thinner and sharper than it had been in my old life, with a more slender nose and a less squinty gaze. It was strange to see my pupils, which had once been obscured by irises so dark they had almost been black. It was strange to see blond hair framing my face.

Somehow, it felt strange to be alive.

"Yoshiya will never see his reflection again," I said quietly, feeling my eyes begin to water. Because really, that's what this conversation had been about, hadn't it? Not about Minato. Not about Itsuki and his losses.

It had been about me and mine.

"He'll never look at his face and think about how it's changed," I whispered, biting my lip when I felt it begin to tremble. "He'll never stare at his own eyes and get to see his pupils change size in light. He'll never fix his hair in a mirror, or comb it, or cut it…"

I suddenly just felt tired. It had been nice to talk about someone else for a bit, however morbid the subject matter had been, but now I was just back to where I had left off—thinking about Yoshiya and crying. I had been crying all day and I still was going at it.

"I just want to stop for a while," I sobbed, putting my tea down on a nearby crate. "But I can't. Every time I think I might be done I just start again."

Itsuki said nothing as I sat there and bawled, gasping and hiccuping and wiping my snot on my sleeve. I found myself hunching up and turning away—I hated crying in front of other people.

"…I'll let your folks know you're staying the night," he finally said when I had stopped hyperventilating long enough listen to him. I knew he doubted it was going to be my last episode—I did too—but I guess he'd figured he'd talk while I was still lucid. "There's a spare room upstairs."

He went away to the back room again, this time emerging not only with a box of tissues but, surprisingly enough, a large bird on his arm. I watched, distantly fascinated, as he quickly scrawled with a brush pen into a scroll before handing it to his falcon. It took it in one talon before beating its wings and soaring out the still-open window.

"Daytime's still a ways off," he said quietly, handing me the tissues as we watched it fly off into the night. "But it'll come faster with company."

* * *

After that, Team 11 entered what was colloquially known as a cripple phase—the stretch of time after a squadmate dies and the team is unable to take missions. It was a phase that usually lasted about two weeks to a month, which was used by the administration to deliberate what to do with the remaining members. The remaining members used it to mourn and often recover themselves—if we had been a regular team and had been assigned on a delivery mission together, it was more than likely that, if we hadn't died, we would've come out injured too.

I usually spent my time hovering around the House and Mikawaya Fruits. I was still prone to randomly tearing up at the sight of previously mundane things, but was mostly past the hysterics phase; now I was more in the train-your-ass-off-and-just-stop-trying-to-think phase. I had roughly gotten Uncle Souhei's chakra flow trick down and was slicing up things ad infinitum; at one point during one of my sessions Auntie Reiko came outside and spent about fifteen minutes just chucking stuff at me, ranging from wads of paper to pieces of wood to actual live kunai to vegetables that needed to be cut for dinner.

The method behind Uncle's approach to chakra flow sounded simple in theory, but was, in reality, actually very tricky to apply. When he talked about "having flexibility in the chakra pathways,"he actually meant "having the ability to stretch your chakra out to painful degrees without actually letting go of you chakra." The principle of it was to apply chakra flow to your own skin without actually dispelling any from your body. You were supposed to coat yourself and make your own current so that when an infused wire touched your skin it would grind against that and not your poor, vulnerable flesh.

(I very, very dimly recalled someone doing something like this with earth-natured chakra, too, but it would be a while before I remembered who it was.)

The reason why you could only learn it as a child was because, as you got older, it became harder to keep your chakra in the almost-out-of-your-body state that using flow on your own skin required. It was still possible, to an extent, but as we learned the farthest an adult could push out the current was to the dermis. Unfortunately, trying to use wind chakra flow there ended in a very, very painful blood blister. Minato, who had been intrigued by the concept, had found that out the hard way: He had originally thought it wouldn't be too different from the concept of water-walking or tree-walking, but as it turned out, expelling chakra so you could use it to cling to surfaces was a very different practice. Uncle Souhei had a given him a very amused I-told-you-so look after that discovery.

(For those of you wondering how using chakra flow on your skin was different from gathering chakra in your feet and using it to stick to things, the difference is this: when tree walking, the chakra in the feet is anchored _throughout_ the feet and whatever kind of footwear you had on, not just on the surface. If it were the same thing as Uncle's trick, you'd be ripping your skin off—or the soles of your shoes, whatever—every time you took a step.)

I made a lot of progress in my solo training. Not just because I had a sort of one-on-one tutorship going on with Uncle now, but because I saw very little of Akihiko and was, therefore, unable to even have team training. He said he was busy completing new Chuunin duties, registering for things and the like, but I knew he just really wanted to be alone a lot. I could respect that, though—we had all been close, but Yoshiya had been Akihiko's best friend before he had been mine. It made sense that he would take it harder than I did.

It did make me feel pretty lonely, though. He was always facing the other way when I looked at him.

"Suzu!" Auntie Reiko called, snapping me out of my daze. I stopped staring into space, got up from my now customary seat on the veranda, and went to the kitchen, where Auntie Reiko was holding a bento wrapped in a blue cloth that I recognized as Minato's.

"Niichan forgot his lunch?" I asked, taking it from her and knowing what my task was without even having to be told. I did this all the time for many of my other cousins, too, after all. "That's kind of unusual for him."

"I think he was intending to just go out and buy today because he left before I got up," Auntie Reiko said with a shrug, wiping her hands on her apron. "Do you mind going over and checking anyway?"

"Sure." I smiled. "It's nice to see him during the day, anyway. Did he say he was going anywhere in particular today?"

"Training Ground 3," she replied.

So… It's been six chapters since this story began and there's a few big questions that have yet to be addressed. I bet you guys have all been wondering. I mean, I can practically hear your voices, and they're going something like this: It's fine and dandy you've settled into your new Narutoverse life, and you've spent marvelous amounts of time developing the characters of all these people we don't actually know, so when are we going to get some actual canon? Are we ever going to meet anyone from Naruto proper besides Minato? Do you even know what you're going to do with your foreknowledge?

Well, friends, now is the time to give these questions answers. Let me respond in reverse order: No, yes, and now.

I arrived at Training Ground 3 after about six or seven minutes of roof-hopping. As usual, the citizens below thought nothing of the assorted mix of men, women, and tweens jumping on the ceilings of their homes. It was a good thing ninjas endeavored to be stealthy and soundless; the sheer amount of traffic these building tops saw would probably drive the residents crazy if they could hear it.

When I got there, though, something was niggling at the edge of my senses. I was not quite a chakra sensor—that sort of skill did not come without years of practice—but I had been training long enough now to develop the sort of shinobi-intuition that could tell when others were around. It was nothing more than an unfounded gut feeling, but we had always been taught never to ignore our gut feelings. And sure enough, when I got Minato in my sights, he was not alone: There were three figures slumped on the ground in front of him. I began to feel a vague anxiety.

He waved when he saw me. I knew for a fact that he had felt me coming—unlike me, Minato was a very accomplished sensor—but it was nice of him to act like I had been stealthy enough to avoid his notice til now. I waved back before lifting his bento into the air and pointing at it. He made a summoning motion, curling his fingers downward.

I pursed my lips and began walking forward, feeling strangely bothered.

"Everyone, let me introduce one of my favorite little sisters, Misuzu Namikaze." Minato grinned when I had finally made my way over to him. "Suzu, this my newly-formed team!"

Oh, Lordy. That was why I had been feeling so weird, I thought as I gave a shallow bow to the three very familiar faces looking up at me.

"Nice to meet you all," I lied, for this was most certainly not the first time I had seen this Team 7. "I'm Suzu."

"I'm Obito Uchiha!" Obito immediately jumped up from his place on the ground, where he had previously been gasping for air like a fish out of water. It was kind of impressive how quickly he had been able to gather the air to shout that at me.

"Kakashi Hatake," Kakashi grunted. We exchanged brief nods—we had seen each before, even if we'd never actually formally spoken.

And then, after him…

"I'm Rin Nohara." The girl who started it all smiled a bit breathlessly, summoning the strength to bend at the waist even though she was sprawled on the ground. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

I held in an uncomfortable squirm. She was so… nice-looking. Pretty. Sweet-sounding. I immediately wanted to like her but it felt like I was suddenly being pulled in two directions.

This girl was going to die.

"Auntie didn't know if you had lunch or not," I said as I looked away to my cousin, unable to keep eye contact with her. I held up the bento. "She wanted to know if you were going to need this or not."

Minato scratched his head.

"I was actually going to treat everyone to Ichiraku's," he confessed, looking regretful. Obito immediately perked up at the mention of free food. "But I hate to waste her cooking…"

I shrugged. Well, it seemed like her intuition had been correct; he had been planning to eat out.

"I'll eat it," I offered. "If you don't mind me using your chopsticks."

Minato smiled guiltily at me. Ah, he was such a ramen addict. It figured.

"Want me to treat you?" he asked, apologetic. I snorted.

"Doesn't that defeat the purpose of me offering to eat this?" I asked, holding in a smile. Minato rubbed his neck.

"It does, but… I feel bad," he laughed sheepishly.

"It's fine," I assured him. "Well… I'd best leave you to team stuff now, yeah?" I couldn't help but grimace then.

"Suzu…" Minato immediately began, looking concerned. He must be thinking I was having another Yoshiya episode, I quickly deduced. Well… I'd take any excuse he'd give. All the more reason for me to run.

"Excuse me," I mumbled to my cousin's students, bowing again and not looking anyone in the eye. I was off before they could respond, shoulders feeling heavy.

They were going to splinter soon. All but one of them was going end up dead… unless I decided to do something about it.

I kept running.

* * *

**A/N: So I really, really should be annotating my AP Lit homework, but I'm writing fanfiction instead. It's not a good idea… and it's probably not gonna last. I've basically just wasted my last free week. Now I have to go to camps and stuff.**

**See you all soon… maybe.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	8. Age 11: Hate

**Published: 8/8/2014**

**Edited: 8/16/2014 because I'm still tweaking the fight.**

* * *

**Chapter 7: Age 11: Hate**

"_Wow, brat, what the hell? You broke her nose!"_

"_Jiraiya-sama, please, don't give him trouble. It doesn't matter anymore—"_

"_I dunno, kid, seems like it matters to him. He can hardly look you in the face right now."_

"_I don't mind! I don't, honest."_

"…_Really, Suzu?"_

"…_Well, okay, maybe I _am _still a bit upset. But to be fair, you _did _break my nose…"_

"_See! What the hell were you thinking, aiming for the face? If she's still mad now, think about how bad things would have been if it had come out crooked! Women are very touchy about their appearance, you know!"_

"…_I knew I should have skipped this session…" _

* * *

"Tanaka, are you in position?" I whispered into my mic, stringing wire around my fingers as I carefully peered around the boulder that was serving as my hiding place. At the end of the road, I could faintly see a group of four approaching, two at the front, one in the middle, and one in the back.

"_Yeah," _came the slightly distorted reply. "_Do you really think we can get to sensei like this?"_

"She'll be expecting something, so if Yuuki can get to her we should be fine," I murmured. "But you _have _to make sure to resurface in the right spot. It's essential."

"_Yeah, I know, I know,"_ Yuuki grumbled agitatedly. "_She can do Hiding Like a Mole way longer than I can. But I_ still _don't think this cliffside is stable enough for you to use explosives—"_

"And I'm _still _telling you I'm not using bombs," I hissed back irately. "It's a technique with a wide range, that's all. It's just I can't control the back precisely and I don'twant to accidentally get you caught in it."

"_Are you sure you should be using stuff you can't control in the field?"_ Tanaka fretted. "_We're still just genin—"_

"It will be _fine _as long as we just do everything according to plan." I sighed. "Look, I've been a genin for two years now, so just trust me, okay? I promise we'll get your sensei back if we can just pull this off. Now everyone, get ready…"

The radio channel fell silent as we all tensed in anticipation, preparing ourselves for our roles. Yuuki was going to use the Hiding Like a Mole Technique to grab his teacher while I jumped out and served as a distraction. Tanaka was going to keep an eye out for reinforcements; we were in enemy territory right now, after all, so we really needed to avoid alerting anyone else to our presence.

"Go!" I yelled as I dove out onto the road, dragging a cloud of steel string behind me, letting it billow out dramatically before lighting it up with chakra. I doubted intimidation tactics would work on these guys, especially coming from a vertically-challenged eleven-year-old like myself, but it couldn't hurt to try.

"_Namikaze_?" Sonohara Airi, Elite Jounin of the Leaf, exclaimed incredulously. She looked shocked to see me in a full frontal assault. Not that I wouldn't be, either, if I were her; even if I was supposedly a nintaijutsu-style fighter, I was a total lightweight. My power did not come from my constitution at all. I was more of a physical-type squishy wizard—which was _also _very bad, seeing as not even the dumbest of gaming novices put their squishy wizards in front. But it was my responsibility as senior field member to keep the rookies out of danger, so to the front I would go, squishy or not.

(I know what you're thinking: Why they hell would you opt for taijutsu if you know you can't tank? Answer: I'm trying to aim for an AGI build, so stop judging.

…Yes, I speak gamer in my head. Shut up, it helps me when I'm strategizing.)

The Iwa ninja surrounding her leapt into action, predictably unaffected by my attempt to puff up my feathers. I quickly signed _below _in Konoha Standard sign language before launching into a long series of very gymnastic evasive maneuvers, letting my wire spread out as much as possible. The enemy ninja paid it no heed, looking pleased to see me on the defensive. I spent a few more seconds ducking and jumping, letting them think I was barely keeping up, before launching my attack.

"Fuuton: Daitoppa!" I exclaimed, thrusting both arms out in opposite directions. The ensuing wind blasts were rather weak for Great Breakthroughs—that was what happened when a tiny person like me split her chakra for two jutsu at once—but the point of it was more to direct the wire than anything, so they served their purpose.

My wires whipped about in the gusts, slicing through the Iwa ninjas' armor and tearing at their skin. One of them fell over after taking a faceful of it, having been positioned right in the middle of the wind blasts. Unfortunately for me, though, that pissed off the two remaining Stone shinobi—who were now bleeding but not incapacitated—quite a bit.

I was suddenly evading again, though this time I had to fight off the drain of what was a very chakra-intensive attack. This was why I was just kind of a sucky ninja in general, I thought exasperatedly as I wildly bent away from a kick that would have most certainly taken off my head. I had a tiny frame, so I lacked in strength; I had tiny reserves, so I lacked in stamina.

But it was dodge or die, so dodge I would. I was forced to continue with my crazy acrobatics until I was gasping for breath, arms and legs burning; I felt a huge surge of relief when a pair of hands shot out of the dirt and seized both Iwa ninja by the ankles. They let out synchronized yells as they were dragged down into the earth, all the way up to their necks. I wasted no time in delivering knock-out blows to back of their heads.

"That was well done, Namikaze," Sonohara-sensei said as she pulled herself out of the ground a moment later, emerging a few feet away from me. I cut the chakra flow and re-rolled the wire around my wrists before bracing my hands on my knees and panting like a dog. Yuuki and Tanaka appeared, the former coming out from behind a boulder and the later dropping down from his perch on the cliff.

"I think you might have permanently disfigured this one," the jounin murmured, bending over the twitching ninja who had taken a face-full of steel. "…I don't think he's dead, but he's probably going to be blind."

I looked to his blood-smeared face and grimaced. Well, that was far from pleasant. …But at least he wasn't dead, right? Right…

"That technique looks like it has potential," she said off-handedly, sounding… not quite impressed, really, but maybe a bit approving. "Do a bit of taming you might get somewhere with it."

"It would have been cooler if you didn't have to flail around to get it to work," Yuuki informed as he crossed his arms, sounding far less appreciative.

"It's a work in progress," I defended, frowning at him. Still, It _was _true… I needed a way to control the wires without wasting so much movement.

That was it for the post-battle discussion, though, because we all spontaneously remembered we were in enemy territory and promptly set to fleeing. Our original assignment—which had been again to deliver supplies (did these missions _ever _go smoothly?)—had ended in disaster when some passing Iwa ninja had spotted Sonohara-sensei and ambushed us to grab her. That was the trend lately—capturing enemy jounin and using them to bargain, usually for your own POWs. Iwa knew we were running short on soldiers and every single jounin, even if they had genin limpets attached, was extremely valuable—to both sides.

After we had retreated behind friendly lines we took a moment to deliberate whether to set up camp, but Sonohara-sensei decided that the day was still young enough for us to make it back to Konoha before dark. It was a bit of a hard run for her students, who were only a month and a half out of the Academy, but we were mostly okay; we made it back around sunset. After that we went to the Missions Office to report, where we were debriefed and told to get our reports in by the end of the week.

I was unexpected at home; my return date was supposed to have been a full week from now. Auntie Reiko, though, just threw in an extra portion's ingredients to her cooking and we had dinner as usual. I regaled the table with a brief recounting of my heroics, ate my dinner and turned in early; I was thoroughly exhausted.

The next day I had just planned to stay at home—Akihiko was out of the village running his own mission—but then, unexpectedly, I had a visitor.

"Sonohara-sensei?" I said after being summoned to the door, surprised to see the brunette woman standing there.

"Here," she said, shoving a scroll at me. "I'm nominating you for a wartime promotion."

I blinked.

"…Pardon?" I asked dumbly. Sonohara-sensei frowned at me.

"I'm nominating you for chuunin," she repeated. "I talked with couple other jounin and they've mentioned you. This should be your fourth nomination, so go take it to the Tower and take your proficiency test. That's my letter of rec." She pointed at the scroll. "That's all. Bye."

She sunshin'd away, leaving me standing in the doorway alone. I blinked, utterly shocked. …What just happened? Did she just say… _chuunin_? I looked down at the scroll in my hands.

Had I just earned a promotion?

* * *

"Ooh, looking good," Chiharu grinned at me when I came down wearing a flak jacket the next day. "Except… are you _still _wearing your horrible old vest?"

"It is _not _horrible." I immediately leapt to the defense of my customary eye-high zipper vest. "The hood's detachable, so why can't I wear it under my chuunin vest? Besides, you hardly ever see me use the collar at home. I just keep it folded. What's wrong with that?"

"It's tacky," she complained, taking me by the shoulders and steering me into the living room, where Jinta and Tenrou were, oddly enough, playing jacks. Did they have jacks in this universe? Apparently they did…

"Jin, don't you think Suzu should just get rid of that ratty old vest she's always wearing?" Chiharu demanded as the two boys took turns tossing the ball into the air and snatching up the little metal jacks as fast as they could. It was sort of fascinating watching ninja children play—their hands darted back and forth so fast they blurred. It was one thing to know most kids at this age could move like that, but it was another to see it in action, especially in something so mundane as a game of knucklebones…

"Hnngh," Jinta grunted in response, attention fixed on the task before him. His fingers flashed forward, deftly picking out six of the metal spikes.

"No one cares, Chippon," Tenrou said distractedly as he tried to match Jinta's grab. "If she wants to wear it, let her."

"Niichan, listen to these guys," Chiharu whined to Minato, who was sitting on a cushion in front of the coffee table, drawing a brush across a scroll. It was a familiar sight; that was his customary place to practice fuuinjutsu now that he was out of a room here.

"Niichan, you're here?" I asked, surprised. Though it wasn't unusual to have him here visiting in the morning, by this time he should have been with his team doing training or running a mission or something of the like.

"Hm?" He blinked and looked up from his work. "Oh, we're having a break day, no worries. By the way, Suzu, good timing! Come here, I was just working on something I wanted to show you…"

Something he wanted to show me, as in me in particular? Curious, I shrugged out of Chiharu's grasp and went to sit next to him. Minato shifted his scrolls about until three seals were spread out before us.

"You mentioned a while ago your wire jutsu was inefficient because of the amount of maneuvering you had to do to get things in place," he began. "But then I thought, isn't that something you can fix with a couple of propulsion matrices?"

"Propulsion matrices?" I repeated blankly. Minato scratched his head.

"Err, you know how there are bukijutsu users who use scrolls to summon knives and such?" he asked. "When they summon them, they just hold out their scrolls and the kunai come flying out…"

Didn't Tenten have a lot of moves where she would toss scrolls in the air and a hail of metal would come raining? I frowned. Yeah, now that I thought about it, how did that happen? If you sealed a kunai in a regular storage scroll, wouldn't it just fall out limply when you re-summoned it instead of rocketing at opponents like you'd thrown them?

"In sealing, propulsion matrices are responsible for putting those knives in motion," Minato answered my puzzled train of thought. "So I was just wondering why you didn't make use of them as well. You could use it to launch wires without having to run around."

"But I couldn't do that unless I sealed my wires in scrolls," I pointed out. "And I can't do that because I need skin contact to put in the chakra flow. That negates the utility of the technique, doesn't it?"

"Ah," Minato said with a smile, "but I thought of that too. I knew a standard storage-propulsion seal wouldn't serve for your purposes, so I made these instead." He gestured to the blobs of ink on the table.

"How are these different?" I asked, peering at them curiously. Several black lines curved and twisted in each of them, forming some sort of strange pattern that I couldn't really decipher. The only thing I could understand on them were the kanji that were drawn in the center of each circle—the first one looked rather similar to a regular storage scroll because it had "contain" written in the middle, but the others were less familiar; "burst" and "anchor," they read.

"They make use of a space-time ninjutsu teleportation," Minato replied, pointing at the one I had just noted. "See, all of these seals are physically linked with an autonomously differentiating base line; that keeps the Serizawa factor low enough to keep the bond from fragmenting—"

"Niichan…" I said, giving him my best dead-eyed stare. Minato laughed sheepishly.

"Why don't I just show you?" he asked, picking up his scrolls and motioning me to follow him out into the yard. When we had positioned ourselves near the training posts, he produced a coil of wire out of nowhere.

"Alright, so I was thinking you'll want to do something like this," he said as he held up the storage scroll and the wire. "This would be the master storage scroll where you put in all of your wire." Here he took the coil and pressed it to the surface of the seal; it sunk in with a puff of smoke. Minato rolled it up and pocketed it.

"Then you'll apply the other two," he continued, holding up his other two creations. "You see, this seal marked burst will draw wire from the master storage scroll and force it outwards the same way regular propulsion seals do. Then the anchor seal, which is linked to _this _seal, will take the bases of each of those wires and establish a physical link to the space it's activated in. If you're touching this seal, you'll be able to apply chakra flow to the wires after you activate them."

And then Minato did something amazing. He took the seal marked burst and pressed it against one of the training logs; a mass of wire burst out and wrapped itself around it. Then he took a couple of paces back toward me and pressed a hand onto the anchor seal; wire materialized around his fingers as a length of steel threads materialized between his hand and the post. He pulsed his chakra through it and then pulled his arm back; the log fell apart in pieces.

"That is so impossible," I said flatly, beyond credulous thought. "How the hell does that even happen? That's… I call hacks."

"…Hacks?" Minato asked, puzzled. I resisted the urged to slap a hand to my forehead; I _had _to stop thinking aloud. It was going to get myself killed one of these days…

"How does that _work_?" I asked instead of elaborating, pointing to the sliced-up post. "That's _impossible_."

Minato laughed, unperturbed by my strangeness—it wasn't the first time he'd heard me babbling perceived nonsense.

"No, it's just fuuinjutsu," he contradicted with a small smile. "Just because you can't see the mechanics of something doesn't make it impossible."

…It was official: sealing was _magic_. Sometimes I wondered why I was even surprised anymore. Naruto ninjas pulled magical crap out of their asses all the time, after all. I should have _expected _something like this, really. If you could use fuuinjutsu to stuff a giant nine-tailed fox demon into a baby's stomach, why couldn't you have physics-defying wire strings?

"I could draw up you a stack of these seals if you'd like, but it might be better if we just inked the anchor on your wrist," he said, motioning to his forearm. "That way all you have to do is learn how to touch-apply the other seal. It's more permanent, but I think you might appreciate it if you're fighting and you happen to run out of paper seals…"

"Touch-apply?" I asked, startled. I didn't think anyone short of a Sealing Master could use touch-applied fuuinjutsu. Could a sealing-illiterate dimwit like me learn how to do something so complex?

"Sure, it's easy if you know the seal well enough," Minato replied with a casual nod. "It won't be any different from learning how to do a new ninjutsu technique, and you've done that before. In fact, people do it all the time. Haven't you seen people summon nin-animals to fight before? That's touch sealing too, you know."

"But I thought the writing just appeared after you make the hand seals," I said, bewildered. "That's not touch sealing."

Minato laughed.

"Suzu, the writings that appear on the ground are just the written forms of the seals you make with your hands," he informed with a very amused smile. "That's why people can also just put blood on a scroll to call their summons—the hand seals that they would have to make are already written out for them."

…_What? _How did that… actually, that made sense. How did I not know that? But then wait a second, why did…

"But then why do you need to make the hand seals at all?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows scrunch together the way they did whenever I encountered ridiculously complicated problems. It was like learning calculus all over again.

"It helps define the chakra when you put it down," Minato said with a shrug. "People do it for accuracy's sake. It's not necessary, though. Watch…"

He put his hand down on the grass without making any hand seals at all; black ink slithered out beneath it. There was a puff of smoke and then suddenly a tiny orange toad appeared, small enough to fit in his palm.

"I'm Gamamaru," the toad announced in a comically squeaky voice, turning to its summoner with what looked to be the toad equivalent of a smile. "Did you need someone to play with?"

…Oh, what the _hell_.

"No, not at the moment." Minato just smiled. "Sorry to call you all the way out here."

The toad shrugged—did toads shrug?—and disappeared in another puff of smoke. I turned to my cousin and stared.

You would think I'd be used to this by now. Really, you would.

"So… want to get started?" Minato queried. "I bet I can get you to do it by the end of the day."

* * *

I bet you guys have all heard the platitude that communication is key when maintaining healthy relationships. I don't know what you guys might think, but I wholeheartedly endorse this statement; God knows it would have saved me—and Akihiko, for that matter—a _lot _of heartache. If we had just spoken to each other properly, I think, we wouldn't have ended up losing so much time together. But we didn't. We never talked—really _talked_—and when the day came for us to break, we broke.

Using that as a segue, I just want to let you all know that I had a number "worst days" in my life. Among them was the day my arm got crushed and the day Yoshiya died. I had a few after that, too, a couple of years after I had become a jounin… and let me tell you, they had been _bad _days. But before those days, there had been this one: the day Akihiko punched me through a tree.

Like most of my "worst days," this one started normally. Well, mostly normally, because after Akihiko returned from leading a week-long border patrol, he visited the House in the very early morning. _Very _early. Like, the unholy hour of _four in the morning_ early.

"What the heck do you need to tell me at this time of day?" I grumbled irately, holding down a yawn as I shuffled outside in my sleeping clothes. It was kind of embarrassing to be standing outside in nothing but a baggy white t-shirt and shorts, but it was still too dark to even freaking see down the street, so I didn't care.

"I'm withdrawing from the General Forces," was Akihiko's blunt reply.

It took me a moment to process that. I blinked. Then I blinked again, and again, and again—

"_What_?" I asked, aghast. _What _had he just said?

"I'm withdrawing from the General Forces," he repeated, a frown on his face.

In that moment, the gradual change that had been occurring over the course of two years completed itself before my eyes. In hindsight he had been frowning long before that moment, but only right then did the significance of his downturned lips seem to truly strike me.

Akihiko was _frowning._

"Why?" I demanded, both for this sudden change and for his statement. _Why _was he frowning? _Why _was he withdrawing?

What the hell was going on?

"I've applied for a position in ANBU," he replied, looking at me with eyes that betrayed nothing. I felt an abrupt, convulsing fear. When had they become like that? Why couldn't I read them? I had _always _been able to read them. Ever since the day we'd met I had always been able to tell exactly what he was thinking.

"You can't do that," I immediately contradicted, clenching my fists tightly as I felt my heartbeat begin to pick up. "You only become an ANBU when the Hokage asks you to."

A flash of anger darted across Akihiko's face. The pounding in my chest doubled at the sight of it.

He had never looked at me like that before.

"You're _always _like this," he muttered in the tone that was always precursor to an explosion. He looked away, glowering at the ground. "_You can't _this, _you can't _that. Do you think I'm an idiot or something? Am I really that stupid to you?"

"What?" I gaped, blindsided. "I—Where the heck did _that _come from? I've never called you stupid before."

"But you've always acted like I am," he snapped, looking back up and glaring. "When we were at the Academy you were always talking down to me, and when I became a chuunin, you didn't believe it either. I'm tired of it. Why should I have to take that from someone like _you?_"

"Someone like me?" I repeated, not liking the delivery of that line. "…What's _that _supposed to mean? All I said was that you can't apply for ANBU. I'm not talking down to you."

"Yes, you are!" Akihiko contradicted with a vehement scowl. "You don't think I know ANBU are hand-picked by the Hokage? Of course I do! _You're _the one who doesn't know that you can train to be one when their numbers are diminished during wartime!"

I felt my eyebrows needle together; wartime again? _Everything _seemed to be permitted in wartime. I mean, I knew things like ages didn't matter to ninja, but Akihiko was _eleven_. Surely we weren't so desperate as to need little boys to become elite assassins.

"But why do you want to?" I asked, feeling ten different levels of confused. "You're only a chuunin. You don't need to—"

"What I need," Akihiko interrupted angrily, "is to get away from _you_!"

I… what? I took a step back, shocked. He… what? He needed to get away from me? But… what did I do? Why did... What was...

"You're a total ditz!" he shouted, shoving an accusing finger at my chest. "You're always getting in trouble and rescued by someone else! You screw up and have training accidents all the time! You can't take care of yourself, you're not _strong_, and you're nowhere _near _as smart as Yoshiya was!"

"I-I—" I stuttered, shrinking back from the explosion of pure hate being thrown at me. "What are—what are you _saying_? I don't... I don't understand—"

"I'm _saying _that you're the most pathetic excuse for a ninja I've ever seen," Akihiko declared, crossing his arms and fixing me with a look so icy it could freeze fire. "And _that's _what I mean when I say _someone like you._ Someone who runs crying to some stupid fruit peddler every time something bad happens."

_That _snapped me out of my shock. I drew in a sharp breath as a hot lick of anger lashed across me.

"Hey!" I said sharply, stepping forward again. "If you're angry at me, that's one thing, but _don't _talk about Itsuki like that. You don't know _anything _about him."

Akihiko was right back in my space, slamming his shoulder against mine and shoving his nose in my face.

"_So what?_" he hissed. "I don't _need _to know anything about him. All I know is that you're trying to replace Yoshiya with some washed-up ninja failure—"

Now, I am not a particularly rage-driven person. Oh, sure, I could get angry and I could hold grudges, but my anger was the quiet kind of anger, the kind that comes out in bouts of passive-aggressive snarks and barbs. I should have taken it in stride; it was obvious Akihiko was employing flawed logic right now—his unsupported accusations and continued non-sequitur mentionings of our dead teammate should have tipped me off that this was an episode of grief rather than an attack to me as a person—and anything he said really shouldn't have meant anything to me. But to hear him simultaneously call Itsuki a _washed-up failure _while telling me that I was trying to use him _replace _Yoshiya?

_That _drove me into rage.

"You bastard!" I shoved him away from me. "_What the hell did you just say?_"

We hadn't gotten into a proper fistfight since we had been in the Academy, but at that moment, we dove at each other in tandem, fully intent on beating the shit out of one another. I knew in my head that there was no way I could take on Akihiko in a no-holds-barred taijutsu match, but I was too angry to care; I just wanted to grind his face into the ground and make him _eat dirt_. How could he even _imply _I didn't cherish Yoshiya's memory with every single scrap of my being? That I didn't _care? _That I would try and _replace him?_

We traded blows for a solid three minutes—I even got two kicks and a punch in—but Akihiko was bigger, stronger, faster, and all around just better than me; in no time at all I found myself being shoved up against the trunk of the old cherry tree that stood across the road from around the House. I glared furiously at him.

"If I had had the choice," Akihiko snarled, "I would have chosen him over you. I'd rather have _him _here now than _you_."

Paradoxically, you hurt less and more when you're angry. If I had been level-headed, the cruelty of those words would have had me in tears; as it was, the only thing I did then was spit in his face.

And then came the worst moment of this worst day: He punched me in the face. Through the tree. With chakra.

It was not a sparring punch. It wasn't even just an angry punch. It was an _I want to kill you_ punch.

Wood exploded behind me; the air rushed right out of my lungs and stars erupted across my vision. I fell into a sprawling, gasping heap over a carpet of jagged splinters, one hand coming up to clutch my face as blood began leaking from my nose.

"I _hate _you," Akihiko spat back.

* * *

**A/N: Yes, I am a giant drama whore. But if you weren't expecting a whole ton of drama, well… it _is _kind of the only genre listed on this story.**

**Anyway, I just learned that you don't capitalize the ninja ranks (chuunin, jounin ect.) so whoops. Not gonna do that anymore. Also, I dunno what storage scrolls actually look like. I just assumed they have a big kanji splat in the the middle like exploding notes. Or the thing that Jiraiya made to seal Itachi's Amaterasu, which had "fire" on it.**

**Also WHY AM I NOT DOING MY HOMEWORK. Argh.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	9. Interlude: Purgatory

**Published: 8/10/2014**

* * *

**Interlude: Purgatory**

_"…I told myself a lot of lies in those days. I told them for a long time… I said I hated her, and that if I just had Yoshiya instead, I would be happier… But now I know better. __I was angry, but not with her. She was just the easiest person to take it out on. Seeing her made it too easy to remember the good times we had all had together, and I couldn't handle that. It made me want him back so badly…_

_"It was only after I lost her that I realized she was probably what I had really wanted all along."_

* * *

"Hey, senpai."

Kamoku was able to catch the scroll thrown at him and identify its origin—his subordinate Akito—without ever looking up from his reading. After he finished the paragraph he was on he set down his book and glanced at the file in his hand.

"The new guy's report?" he asked quizzically, unrolling it and giving it a once over, briefly scanning through some general background before reading his current evaluation. "Seems like he's doing fine."

"They want you to run his last test," the cat-masked ANBU in the doorway shrugged. "I'm kind of inclined to agree. That sort of thing isn't my specialty, if you what mean."

Kamoku smiled dryly. So he was needed his _specialty_, was he? That didn't bode too well for the recruit, but Kamoku wasn't going to argue. If they wanted him to take a crack a breaking the new guy, well, that was his job.

"I've been meaning to take a look at him in person," Kamoku said with a shrug, re-rolling the scroll as he stood and reached for his mask. "As soon as I heard we had a kid coming in I was interested."

"I left him out on the training field," Akito replied. "He's waiting at the north end."

"Then I'll get on it." Kamoku nodded; Akito left with a wave. His squad leader put on his mask before zipping away in a shunshin, crossing ANBU Base 1 in a matter of seconds; when he came to a stop outside on the training field, there was a little boy standing in front of him, dressed head to toe in black. Kamoku could tell his hair had recently been cut; every time the wind blew, he blinked as though expecting bangs to brush over his eyes.

"Namikaze Akihiko," Kamoku intoned, tossing his scroll in the air, catching it, and sliding it into his belt pouch in two fluid motions. He eyed the boy critically. "Last test. Show me what you can do."

Kamoku technically didn't need to see Namikaze jump through advanced kata and show off his athletic ability—the others had already evaluated his skill level—but he wanted to observe the new recruit up close. He scrutinized him closely, taking in every punch and kick and grunt and analyzing it, quietly fitting pieces of a puzzle together until he had put together a picture he was satisfied with.

"Enough." Kamoku waved a hand. Namikaze halted and returned to his place in front of the monkey-masked ANBU, standing attentively. Kamoku folded his arms and regarded the boy coolly.

"What are you running from?" he asked. Namikaze blinked, once, twice—

"I don't follow, sir," he said, smoothing the puzzlement off of his face. Kamoku snorted.

"Yeah, I bet. Give me two-hundred high kicks," he ordered. Namikaze blinked again at the non-sequitur demand before smothering a look of irritation and turning to the post behind him. He sank into a taijutsu stance and executed a flawless high kick, torso twisting easily, arms and legs moving in perfect unity. Kamoku sauntered forward.

"When kids dream of being ninja," he began, circling the boy, "they don't dream of ANBU. No one sees us enough to aspire to it."

Namikaze said nothing, focusing on his task.

"No one comes here unprompted unless someone needs it," Kamoku murmured, uncrossing his arms leaning on another post, staring intently into Namikaze's blank face. "Your family holds you to no particular expectation and you have no obvious motivation for being here. No one has forced you here; you have come on your own without being requested. And if you have come on your own, without the need to impress anyone or fulfill someone's wishes, _you_ are the one who needs be here. Conclusion: You are running."

Namikaze let out a grunt; the post splintered with a crunch. Kamoku cocked his head to the side. Well. It seemed the new guy had a temper.

"You have nothing to say?" Kamoku prodded, intent on figuring out how far Namikaze could be pushed. "You're not going to deny it?"

Grunt, kick.

"So are you admitting to running away?"

Grunt, kick, crunch.

"We don't accept cowards, you know," Kamoku informed lightly, adjusting his gauntlets. "Guess we'll just have to send you back."

The fear in the boy's face was so quickly replaced with fury that Kamoku almost missed it—almost. The training post received a strike so vicious it shattered, sending slivers of wood flying. Several of them lodged themselves in Namikaze's calf.

"Your poor form is confirmation enough," Kamoku shrugged as the blonde let out a hiss, shifting onto one foot—perfect balance, hm—as he pulled his leg up to examine the damage. "You might as well just tell me. Why are you here?"

"There's nothing for me in the General Forces," Namikaze bit out, planting both feet back onto the ground with a glare. "I can get better here and I can do it faster. That's reason enough."

Kamoku raised an eyebrow even though he knew the boy couldn't see it.

"Is that so?" he asked, contemplating briefly what angle to work him from before settling on the wound he knew that was still raw and bleeding. "And Misuzu? Now that your teammate Yoshiya's gone she's your only friend."

Just as Kamoku had predicted, the brief flash of emotion that shot across Namikaze's face was one of pulsing, festering pain. Yoshiya? Kamoku considered it with a hum. No… Misuzu. She'd serve his purpose much better. Cousin, teammate, and friend… she was perfect. Not to mention she was still alive—there were so many more approaches to take when the exploit wasn't dead.

Namikaze snarled, trying to let his fury mask his moment of vulnerability, but Kamoku had already latched on to his weakness. He was one of ANBU's best interrogators, after all. Only the T&I specialists could beat him out when it came to hitting where it hurt.

"She'll only hold me back," Namikaze declared boldly, but the waver in his voice precluded any pretense of credulity Kamoku might have had. The report read that they had recently come into conflict, but he knew for a fact no attachments are so easily severed. "She's nowhere near my skill level. I don't need her."

"But what if she needs you?" Kamoku asked blithely, bringing a hand up and pretending to examine his glove. "Recently field promoted, wasn't she? If you're right about her skill, she's in trouble."

He looked at Namikaze out of the corner of his eye; the boy frowned harshly but resolutely said nothing.

"Don't you think you should look after her?" the ANBU drawled, undeterred, as he shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at the kid down his nose. "She won't be able to look after herself. Field promoted chuunin are always the first kind of chuunin to die, you know."

There it was. Namikaze's will began to warp—Kamoku saw in the way that his shoulders hunched and his gaze turned downward. Breaking point already? The monkey-masked ANBU was a bit disappointed. What a shame. He had had so much potential.

But then, slowly, Namikaze's head began to rise. Intrigued, Kamoku watched as the swirling storm of confliction in the boy's eyes receded. Cold, emotionless determination took its place.

"That's her problem," he said, hands fisted but face admirably clear of any emotion.

Kamoku regarded the boy carefully, feeling a vague sense of surprised delight trickle over himself. He gave a very, very small twitch of the lips.

"That's cold," he said, allowing a sharp smirk to settle on his face as he slid his mask off. Blue eyes met brown; Namikaze's chin jutted stubbornly.

"That's life," he retorted, arms crossing. Kamoku laughed cynically. Was that bravado? _That_ would be interesting.

"Careful, little boy," he warned with a dark smile. "You think you can handle that kind of talk? Greater men than you have broken over those words, and no one here is going to hold your hand and ask you what's wrong when you're suffering alone in silence."

"Then that's _my_ problem," Namikaze coolly replied, gaze frigid. Kamoku beat back a grin of satisfaction, opting instead to stare the boy down with every ounce of intimidation he could muster. A short silence fell over them, the younger glaring defiantly up at the older. Kamoku drew back a bit, mind turning as he formed his final judgement.

"…You'll go far here, kid," he finally said, nodding once and smiling at him ever so faintly. "I look forward to working with you… _Rengoku_."

* * *

**A/N: I had this written a while ago, so I figured I'd throw it out here just so you guys could have something to look at. Oh, and for those who don't know: rengoku = purgatory. It's Akihiko's new codename. Aww, isn't it so symbolic?**

**Oh, and speaking of codenames. I don't buy into the whole animal naming theme. First of all, there are only so many animals you can make masks out of, and how many Tori-sans do you think these guys could tolerate? Besides, almost all of the ANBU names we have seen so far have been either nouns or regular names: Shadow (kage, that one guy you see really, really briefly), Yamato, Tenzo, ****Kinoe, **Torune and Fu...

**Anyway, thanks for the lovely comments as usual. I appreciate it!**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	10. Age 11: Bells

**Published: 8/23/2014**

* * *

**Chapter 8: Age 11: Bells**

_"You know, I always wondered why I never gave Kakashi-kun a good thrashing."_

_"Reiko, he was a jounin at the same age you failed your second Chuunin Exam. I don't think you'd have gotten too far with that."_

_"Is that a challenge, dear? You should know best of all that I can beat the ass of anyone who messes with my babies."_

_"I think I sense a story behind that sentence, ojisan."_

_"...You know, Misuzu, you really shouldn't try to stick your nose where it doesn't belong."_

* * *

When this story reaches its completion, the me you see will be well into her twenties. A lot of things have happened to that girl over the course of two decades, and I can say with absolute certainty that she has screwed up. There have been countless ill-made decisions. So many mistakes, a myriad of moments when I can only look back and ask myself what the hell she had been thinking… but if you asked me right now, after years of living and fighting and succeeding and failing, what her greatest mistake was, I would tell you it was this: Letting Team Minato go to Kannabi Bridge unprepared.

It has always been, and always will be, I think, my greatest act—or non-act, I suppose—of cowardice. Never has there been a time before or after that could match it. It was not a moment of pride for me. Even if it would have ended badly for me I know I should have told Minato long ago what I knew—if not for the sake of his own health and safety, then for the sake of all of Konoha. But unfortunately, that lesson was one I would not learn for a long while yet. It was only after I had grown up and was leading my own teams on my own missions that I truly understood that there are times where you must act, even when it is to your own detriment. When the entirety of the village is depending you, there is no room for _you_.

It's a heavy burden to bear, the safety and happiness of countless others; it's the burden that all Leaf shinobi carry, and I've not always borne it well. It was my responsibility as a Konoha ninja to do something, but I didn't. I was too self-absorbed.

It's probably one of my biggest regrets in life.

It was more than just the death of a comrade. It was more than just knowing I had murdered through negligence—because even if Obito was still alive, _Obito_ was dead—and it was more than just knowing Minato was suffering through one of the worst tragedies in his shinobi career. Those traumas, though painful, I could have dealt with. No… it was the knowledge that he had come home to take comfort in my presence—me, the girl who was part of the reason Obito was gone in the first place—that hurt the most. I don't mean that in an egotistical way, because it wasn't like he had come to the House just for me—there is a lot of comfort to be found just in being in a place associated with safety and love—but it was true: After his student at died en route to Kannabi Bridge, Minato came to the House and chose to sit next to me to do his mourning. Not Auntie Reiko, not Uncle Souhei, not any of the House kids closer to his age.

Me.

He was fond of me. He thought I was his cute baby cousin. He thought I was just a little girl, and he felt obliged to look after me, always watching over me in the spirit of the benevolent big brother. In his eyes, I was just an innocent eleven-year-old chuunin, not a gutless grown woman hiding behind a stolen face.

(That's probably the reason why I had been so scared to tell him: He'd _know_. He'd know that I was a fake, that I wasn't truly his family, and then I wouldn't get to be doted-upon Suzu-chan anymore. I'd be a stranger, and I'd lose my niichan.)

The guilt of it would have been enough to crush the Greek Titan Atlas, that's how heavy it was. On my shoulders, in my mind, it outweighed the _world_. I think I must've cried for hours after he returned, because every time I looked up and saw the shadow that had crept into his eyes, I died a little bit inside knowing that I had helped put it there. And what was worse was that _he_ tried to comfort _me_ after finding out about Akihiko's cataclysmic departure, mistaking that for the cause of my periodic sobbing fits. Naturally, I cried even harder every time he attempted it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again—I have done _nothing_ to deserve the love and loyalty of a man like Minato Namikaze.

I think the universe knew that, too, because it felt the need to rub in how badly I screwed up. That or some higher being with a sick sense of humor was intent on screwing with my life. Why did I think that? Because after Team 7 finished its cripple phase, I received my reassignment. My partner—and Akihiko and I _had_ been a registered unit, even if we had often split to be on different missions—was gone now, after all, making me a cripple myself. And what better way was there to fix the issue of two incomplete teams than to stick them together?

Three guesses as to who my new commanding officer was. First two don't count.

I cannot even begin to _describe_ the level of scummy I felt after I was designated Obito's replacement. It was almost like I had been gunning for this spot or something and I killed him off for my own betterment. Of course, with that said, such a thing had never been my intention, but the phrase _terrible excuse for a human being _was still always on my mind regardless. Even if I hadn't purposely orchestrated it, he was still gone because of my inability to act, so the principle of it was the same: Obito was dead because of my selfishness.

The morning of my reassignment was one filled with crushing trepidation. The very thought of standing before the assembled faces of my cousin's team made my heart sink into the earth, and it took every scrap of my happiness with it when it settled in its well-deep grave. The world itself had taken on a slightly gray tint, and somehow I got the feeling that if I did anything to disturb this newfound gloom, some undefined horror would fall upon me. Consequently, when I emerged after dressing for the day, I did so in black: black shirt, black skirt, black over-the-knee socks, black sandals; the only color I ended up having on me was the subdued green of my flak jacket. Even my customary ponytail seemed intolerably bouncy, so I just ended up pulling my hair over one shoulder and fixing it there with a band. I didn't wear my ninja-zipper-collar vest.

It was like putting on funeral clothes all over again. In a way, it _was_ a funeral, because the final moments of the final remnant of Team 11 were fast approaching. Soon my genin team would permanently become a thing of memory—no more Yoshiya, no more Akihiko, and no more friends.

_That_ was a depressing thought. I'd only ever bothered to cultivate proper peer-to-peer relationships with those two, so beyond my family members, I really didn't have any more friends. I guess I'd never expected them to die... Well, to die and to punch me through a tree before cutting off all relations, specifically. But that was as good as dead, really, so it was only a technicality.

If I bothered to make an Earth metaphor, it would go something like this: Losing your team was a lot like the feeling of playing a sequel in a video game series. The first game had been great, with an amazing cast and a tear-jerking, heart-rending plot, but then it ends. You play the second to try and fill the void left behind, and while it's got its own wonderful people and a new mission in a different-but-familiar background, your heart still bleeds for the originals you had attached yourself to. You're always longing for the old times. You're always missing the old quest. You're always looking for _them_, remembering the things they did, drawing parallels in everything, seeing them and the things they did everywhere but never actually meeting them again…

I kept my gaze turned away when I met Minato out on the porch, clenching my fists and fixing my eyes on the best possible distraction: the splintered stump of an old cherry tree across the street. Its bark was splintered and jagged and, frankly, ugly as hell, but I had insisted they leave it there. I don't know why, but I wanted it—no, _needed_ it—to stay exactly where it was. Its presence accomplished nothing, but it brought comfort to me all the same.

"Ready to go?" Minato asked with false cheer, making no note of my inability to look him in the face. I just mumbled an affirmative, jerking my head away from the tree-remains and staring at my feet instead.

We made our way to the training ground in silence. I could tell he was worried—I didn't think I'd said a word in actual conversation with him since he'd returned—but I didn't do anything about it. I _couldn't_ do anything about it. Any pitiful facade I tried to muster would be so pathetically obvious that it wasn't even worth trying.

Training Ground 3 came into view. The Memorial Stone glinted in the distance, Konoha's flag flying high beside it. I quickly averted my eyes and looked instead to the trio of training posts stuck in the ground a few ways away, where two figures were standing. Both of them immediately straightened when we approached.

"Sensei," Kakashi said, gaze only briefly flicking to me before focusing on his teacher questioningly. His hitai-ate was slanted over his left eye; I felt my insides go icy at the sight of it.

"Good morning, sensei," Rin greeted, smiling a small smile, but its effect was tainted by the quiet sorrow coloring her voice. "And Suzu-chan, right?" She looked to me.

"Yeah," I murmured guiltily, staring determinedly at the spot right next to her head and feeling slightly disappointed that she'd remembered me. If she'd forgotten, I wouldn't have had to feel that much more guilt over her wasted conscientiousness. "...Hi."

"Did you get promoted since we last saw you?" she queried at the sight of my chuunin vest, unaffected by my lack of social grace. "Congratulations!"

I smiled weakly. _Yes_, whatever deity above, I hear your message loud and clear: Rin is the sweetest kunoichi. Please stop trying drown me in my own remorse.

"Is she here to observe team training?" Kakashi wanted to know, looking significantly less enthused by my presence. Minato rubbed his neck.

"Actually," he began cautiously, "she's just recently been assigned a new team…"

Kakashi had whipped his head around to stare at me before Minato even finished his sentence. The air cooled about about ten degrees; I bit my lip and immediately began shuffling behind my cousin.

A moment of awkward silence.

"...Yoroshiku," I said quietly, fisting my hands in my skirt. It was the standard thing to say for a the beginning of a team: _Let's get along. Please be kind to me. I look forward to your guidance._ Of course, I had no right to request any of those things, and if Kakashi's icy glare was any indication of future relations, I certainly wouldn't be getting any of it.

"Yoroshiku, Suzu-chan," Rin tried to break the tension, smiling her tiny smile. Oh, this girl tried so hard...

"Why don't we do introductions?" Minato suggested quickly, sending Kakashi a worried glance. "I know you've met before, but since we're working together now, we should all know each other better, don't you think?"

"...I'm Misuzu Namikaze," I said when he looked at me. "But I usually go by Suzu. Um... I like reading. And my family. I don't like… uh, I don't know," I wrinkled my nose, "supply delivery missions? My hobby is, um, reading again, probably. And my dream…" I paused. Did I have a dream? Lately I hadn't been thinking much of the future. I considered it for a moment. "...I want to live a fulfilling life, I guess."

Wow, that was smooth. Minato stared at me with that concerned look he'd been giving me for a while now. I shrugged helplessly.

"I'm Rin Nohara," Rin began, coming to my rescue. "I like reading as well! It's my favorite thing to do along with practicing iryou ninjutsu, which is also my biggest hobby. As for dislikes, I think it's awful when people are suffering. That's why my dream is to be a good medic and a strong kunoichi of Konoha that can protect the village."

...Jesus Christ, she's so goddamn _nice_. Is it even _possible_ for ninjas to be that nice?

"Kakashi," Minato prompted when Kakashi continued to stare at me like I'd kicked his puppy and laughed about it in his face. Kakashi scowled—and you could tell he was scowling, his mask was creasing heavily—and crossed his arms.

"I'm Kakashi Hatake," he said flatly. He said nothing else.

"...Do you like reading, too?" I tried hesitantly, getting the distinct feeling that I would probably regret it.

"That's none of your business."

...Yeah, I think I'll just keep my mouth shut from now on.

* * *

The next couple of weeks were spent confined to the village. I think Minato really must have taken my comment on supply missions to heart; we managed to avoid having a single delivery assignment in all of those fact that he was trying so hard to cheer me up left me in a state of constant self-loathing; colorless clothes and perkless side-pontytails were quickly becoming my regular look.

Team interactions were mixed. Rin and I actually got along together pretty well, but then again, that wasn't unexpected—she was so incredibly good-natured that I would have to expend conscious effort to _not_ get along with her. The reverse was true of Kakashi, though: All I had to do to piss him off was breathe. He hated my guts. At first he'd mostly just ignored me, but after a week or two he loosened up, and soon his ruthless snarking had my neck fixed in a permanent downward bend. The fact that I was nearly two years younger than him and Rin—and therefore two years behind in skill—didn't really help.

(I used to think I was good at taijutsu. Really, I did. I'd been able to hold my own against the best taijutsu specialist of my graduating class, after all. But facing Akihiko, I soon learned, was _nothing_ like facing Kakashi.)

As for Minato... the only word to describe the situation was _awkward_. We could hardly stand in the same room without killing the mood of everyone within a ten foot radius. I could tell that he was at wit's end trying to figure out what in the world was going wrong between us, but unfortunately, he was fighting a losing battle. No amount of effort on his part could stop my guilt trips.

Still, my total lack of friends pushed me to try and pursue deeper friendship where I could. Even though I felt like an asshole for trying to worm my way into her life, I often found myself hanging after team missions and training to talk to Rin, who was more than happy to let me follow her all over the village as she went about doing various tasks. Going out to the forest to pick herbs and other medicinal plants together became our prime pastime; it was a good way to spend productive time together while still talking.

One day, after a typical afternoon of patrolling and other similarly dull missions, we found ourselves out in the bush together once more, hunting for milk thistles. At first our conversation was the regular fare—so-and-so did this at the hospital, this-or-that-cousin got in trouble at the House, that sort—but then, out of the blue, she said, "Kakashi isn't a bad person, you know."

I blinked and stopped halfway through putting a handful of purple-tipped stems into the basket on my arm, a bit taken aback by the nonlinear turn in our dialogue.

"Er..."

"He's upset that our old teammate was replaced," Rin informed, coming over and kneeling in the grass next to me, brow furrowed but expression earnest. "He's just taking out his frustration you. It's not your fault."

A snort escaped me before I could stop it. Oh, if only she knew.

"I'm serious!" Rin frowned. "Please don't think badly of him. I know it's hard because he's always so nasty with you, but…"

"No, I believe you," I assured her, cutting another green stem from the patch before us. And I did. Even if it was jarring to see him as an angry, rude, antisocial teenager, in my heart I still carried the image of a Kakashi who read smutty novels and cared fiercely for his comrades. He was still only fourteen or so; there was still so much time for him to change. I could hardly fault him for it anyway—I was no saint. And beside that, it seemed like this was the trend lately. People taking out frustration and grief on me, that is.

"It is?" Rin asked, sounding concerned. I froze for a moment before internally smacking myself. God, I've been working on this issue for years and I still can't stop thinking aloud. What the hell was wrong with me?

"I kind of don't want to talk about it," I told her apologetically, cringing at just the thought of it. "Just… let me say that I know people can turn all kinds of awful when their friends die. But it's not their fault, at least not completely."

For a while I had wondered if I hated Akihiko. No matter how badly he had taken Yoshiya's death, he had had no right to blow up at me like that. Maybe I had exacerbated things by getting angry and yelling back, but if he was going to let his grief get the better of him, why couldn't I? If I had been doing something that upset him, he should have told me. You would think that after more than half a decade of friendship he'd say what he wanted to say. But he hadn't, and now the only thing we would ever remember about each other was the way we'd fought and spat in each others' faces.

Was I hurt? Of course. Was I angry? Hell yes. But did I hate him? Could I completely discard our bond and despise him utterly?

No, never. Akihiko had been my first friend in this universe. I'd had family, sure, but everyone knows you get along with family more out of obligation than desire; to have a _friend_, someone who freely chooses to take part in your company, was something else. He'd accepted me without knowing who Suzu—the original Suzu—was, and with him I had been able to be myself, without any pretenses. I couldn't hate him. I could only hurt now that he was gone, the same way I had after Yoshiya died.

And in that vein, I couldn't hate Kakashi either. Death was ironic in the amount of life that it controlled, and he was very much under its sway. Besides, who better to despise me than Obito's best friend? I'd take his nastiness. It was well-deserved.

"Suzu-chan…" Rin murmured.

"I know Kakashi-senpai's a good guy." I nodded decisively and gave her a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, senpai."

Rin blushed. "I told you Rin was fine," she murmured, embarrassed.

Oh. Well, that _was_ true—she had told me right off the bat she would prefer that I just use her given name rather than a title—but I'd held off on it, mostly because Kakashi had been giving me the evil eye when she'd said it.

"Rin-san, then?" I asked, not opposed to heeding her request. I understood Japanese honorifics perfectly well, but I didn't really care much for them if people didn't mind.

"Rin," she said firmly. "Just Rin. Teammates are your family, too."

That… was really, really touching.

"Rin," I repeated, heart constricting a bit.

"Yes?" Rin smiled.

Maybe I shouldn't have tried to get close to her. Maybe I shouldn't have cared so much. I knew it wasn't my place to try and make friends with someone who I was letting march to her own annihilation, and I knew that it would only end in more guilt and more heartbreak for me, and I knew that I couldn't take another disaster. But as I stared into those warm brown eyes and took in that lovely smile and thought about nice it would be to share a companionship with someone after three lonely months, I found myself tearing down the half-formed walls I'd started building around my heart.

"You should just call me Suzu," I said.

* * *

Making friends with Rin meant one thing, and one thing only: I was going to change the canon. Obviously just by being assigned to Team 7 I had altered something, but I had no reason to believe that alone would save her. No, I had to do something bigger. I wasn't just going to stand by this time.

I began to follow her everywhere. If Rin had anything to say about my sudden clinginess, she didn't show it, and seemed to always be happy to have a companion along. Even on missions I stuck to her like glue, partnering with her whenever the team split and dogging her every step. Minato allowed it, probably thinking that I had attached myself to her to avoid being stuck alone with the more prickly of my teammates. He never suspected that I was on a mission to save the team medic from death.

And I'll be damned if I don't.

* * *

**A/N: The character for "bell" (鈴) can be read both as "suzu" and as "rin."**

**Oh, and for the Greek mythology majors itching to pounce on me for saying Atlas carried the world on his shoulders: yes, I know that he actually carried the celestial spheres, not the world. But the misconception is common these days and it came out before I could think, and it sounded so nice that I didn't want to take it out, and so I'm employing my artistic license. Sorry.**

**Anyway, sorry for the wait. School just started and the teachers are already piling on the work. I didn't really want to make anyone wait any longer, so it's shorter than usual… and a bit choppier. Team 7 all together is actually kind of difficult to write.**

**(Reeeally hoping Rin doesn't devolve into a Sue under my pen urgh.)**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


	11. Age 11: Shame

**Published: 9/10/2014**

* * *

**Chapter 9: Age 11: Shame**

_"You had your first kill in that fight, didn't you?"_

_"I... yeah, I did. First several kills, actually..."_

_"I'm sorry, Suzu. I should have stayed with your group. I knew you weren't well... and it was my responsibility to look after your health, physical and mental. If I'd stayed, you wouldn't have—"_

_"No, stop there. Leave it be. We've gotten past it now, and I'd like to keep it that way."_

_"...Right. Sorry."_

* * *

Itsuki was pissed.

_"You,"_ he hissed, shunshin-ing away from the counter and stabbing a finger down at my chest the moment I stepped through the door. "Where the _hell_ have you been?"

His tone was decidedly irate. I looked away and shoved my hands in my pockets.

"Around," I muttered edgily, peeking at him out of the corner of my gaze. Hazel eyes narrowed.

"Around," he repeated scathingly. "It's been five months without a word and all you have to say is you've been _around_?"

"A lot of stuff's been going on," I defended, agitated, as I tried and failed to control my need to kick my toes at the ground. Ninjas weren't supposed to have nervous tics, but that was mine: scuffing my shoes.

And Lord was I nervous. If I had a choice, I wouldn't even be here, but Rin had officially kicked me out of the hospital this morning. We'd been taking care of first aid patients all night long—a rotation had just ended so there was fresh batch of injured ninjas streaming in from the front lines—and since I'd managed to absorb quite a lot of medical knowledge by hanging around her so much, the hospital staff hadn't really cared I wasn't a trained iryou-nin, only that I knew how to properly bandage wounds and make splints. Now that things had calmed down a bit, though, I had been politely but firmly been told to _get out._

I felt uncontrollably jumpy. For the past two months I'd been successfully shadowing her, but nothing had happened yet, and it was driving me insane. I only knew about the aftermath of the kidnapping, not its happening; unfortunately, that did absolutely nothing to help me. I needed to stop it _before _it happened.

The pressure was incredible. My mind was constantly whirling with anxiety, keeping me up and tossing at night, always wondering, always asking, _What if it happens now? _

(What if Madara's agents were in the village at this very moment? What if they snatched her when she was on the way home? She was an orphan, so no one would miss her until it was too late. Hell, they were so busy at the hospital right now that they could pluck her right out and no one would notice! _What if she was already gone?_)

_Damn _it. Rin was going to _die _if I didn't get my shit together.

"...Are you okay?" Itsuki asked, withdrawing his hand and regarding me with the expression one gives a raving schizophrenic. I belatedly realized I'd just gone through one of my now-periodic psychotic episodes right in the doorway of his fruit store.

...Well.

"You don't look too good," my former-chuunin friend said slowly. "In fact, you look pretty bad. You're not... having a _break, _are you?"

The break he was referring to, I knew, was not a vacation. Unfortunately, I couldn't blame him for asking; I could probably convince a lot of people if I pretended to snap right now, Itsuki most of all.

"I'm not at the point just yet," I laughed dryly. "But I don't think it'll take much to get me sliding, either."

"What's wrong?" Itsuki asked, expression devoid of any mirth. I felt my wry smile fade. No, he wouldn't find that amusing, would he? Not after what he'd been through.

"...It's not something I can really talk about," I said after a moment. "It's kind of… classified." Classified by me, anyway.

"Then tell me about what's going on with that getup." Itsuki didn't miss a beat, pointing at my outfit. "You're not wearing your ridiculous zipper collar anymore."

I felt a flash of irritation. "Why does everyone give the vest so much flak?" I demanded of the universe, turning my gaze up toward the ceiling. It's not like it was unusual. Just about every Aburame I'd ever come across had a jacket like that. "It is _not_ ridiculous."

"Yes, it is. Why aren't you wearing it?" the brunet persisted, disregarding any thoughts of Aburames. I looked back down and scowled at him.

"Because I didn't want to," I grumbled. Itsuki gave me a withering look. "_What_?"

"I was hoping for a more inspired response," he informed unamusedly. "Suzu, don't try to mess around with me. If you don't tell me what's going on _right now_, believe me when I say I won't hesitate to get you flagged."

I felt a flash a panic despite myself. Getting withdrawn for a potential psychotic break was the last thing I needed right now; there was no way I could afford getting taken off of active duty, not when Rin was in danger. And hell, if that happened, it would only be a matter of time before the wrong person found out about what I knew. I shuddered and thought of Danzo.

"...Sometimes I really goddamn hate you, Mikawaya," I exhaled sharply after an extended battle of wills, opting instead to fix him with my best glare. It wasn't nearly as scary as it had been on my old face, me being an eleven-year-old and all, but at least I was finally at an age where I could start swearing again without being given incredulous looks.

(Well, not by ninjas, anyway. All ninjas know shinobi families don't make much of an effort to filter their profanity; sheltering kids is not something they do.)

"And yet you always come back." Itsuki rolled his eyes, unaffected by my woefully unintimidating death stare. "Well? It's been five months. I'm _waiting_."

"Look," I sighed frustratedly, pinching the bridge of my nose, "things have been rough lately, all right? I'm just stressed. I had a reassignment and there's been a lot of friction..."

"What?" Itsuki demanded, alarmed. "What do you mean _reassignment? _What happened to Akihiko?"

My mood, which had already been foul, immediately took a sharp nosedive. "He's gone," I said flatly, unwilling to recount the disastrous fight. Itsuki could interpret that statement however he wished. Let him think my friend died; things would be simpler that way. "Let's not talk about it."

Itsuki stared at me, astonishment quickly morphing into his usual calculating glint. He scrutinized me closely.

"You're not giving me the whole story," he finally declared.

"I'm not," I agreed as coolly as I possibly could, desperately hoping he wouldn't push it. If I needed to do it to avoid getting benched, I would talk about Akihiko, but I _really_ didn't want to.

"...Then what's got you so wound up? Clashing with your teammates doesn't put you to mental instability," Itsuki said shrewdly, mercifully not pursuing the subject of my face-breaking cousin. "It's not the reassignment. You're sitting on something big, aren't you?"

"...Maybe I am," I sighed half-heartedly, figuring any further attempts to hide it were futile. Itsuki always could figure me out. "Maybe it's huge and maybe I'm going crazy trying to figure out what to do about it."

"Talk to a superior if it's that big a deal. Hell, talk to your parents," Itsuki suggested. "Friends and family exist for a reason, you know. They'll help you sort it out."

"I _can't_," I snapped, feeling my temper begin to rise. I did _not_ need him saying I should tell someone. I was already having a hard enough time not spilling my guts to the first person who'd listen. "I have to figure it out on my own."

"And my neighbor's cat is the Rikudo Sennin," Itsuki immediately deadpanned. "Suzu, you don't do things _on your own_, not in this village. We put shinobi in teams for a reason, and it is _not_ to bottle things up and go insane when it explodes."

"Well, this is an exception." I said, gritting my teeth. Besides, who would actually believe me? I wasn't about to give my family another reason start scooting away from me at dinner. Haruka already ran away just at the sight of me these days.

"Don't try and act like you're special." He frowned. "Nothing will come of keeping it to yourself."

"Oh, piss off!" I threw my hands up. "Why won't people just leave me alone about it? I came here instead of the House to avoid this exact same lecture, damn it." I'd had two sit-down-and-talk sessions in the past week alone, and lately even Chiharu was telling me to take it easy. I was suffocating with all of these people breathing down my neck.

"If they're telling you the same thing at home, maybe you ought to take their advice," Itsuki advised wryly. "Chances are they're concerned for a reason. These kind of things tend to blow up in your face, you know, and I doubt you'll be the only one to get caught in the blast."

Upon reflection, I realize I really should have been thankful that he was looking out for me, but my sense of gratitude was pretty much nonexistent at that point. Common courtesy—or just decency in general, really—was the last thing on my mind. So I won't try to to hide it: I turn into an asshole under stress.

Itsuki said nothing I spun on my heel and stormed away, angrily jabbing my middle finger into the air as I went.

* * *

Once upon a time, somewhere in my mind, the act of walking upon water had been a miracle. Something strange, something supernatural. Something only a holy man from two thousand years ago had ever been purported to do.

Channelling chakra into my feet, I set one bare foot on the surface of the lake in the woods behind the compound, making sure to keep the flow constant. After taking chakra flow out into battle and maintaining multiple currents in the heat of combat, it was positively effortless. I was walking to lake's center before I knew it. Water seeped between my toes, splashing lightly with every step.

The molecules of liquids had different ways of interacting with one another. Two of those forces were adhesion and cohesion, the attraction between—in this case—water molecules to other molecules and water molecules to themselves, respectively. When the forces of cohesion outweigh those of adhesion, water operates as though an elastic membrane has been stretched over its surface. That was why some bugs, despite being denser than the actual water itself, can run on it without sinking in.

Chakra imitated nature in form—which was also why it manifested itself with an elemental nature—and, in the case of water walking, pond skaters. Through some unexplainable magic, it formed a layer of hydrophobic molecules that allowed people to run around on water like they were Jesus bugs. I was stumped as to how we, being bipedals, didn't break the surface tension anyway—unlike insects, ninjas can't distribute their weight at six different points—but somehow, it still worked.

A casual miracle.

Cutting the chakra to one of my feet, I balanced on the other swept my toes out across the water. Watching tiny waves ripple away from the contact, I let out a sad sigh at the irony of it all. Here I was, doing what only Christ could have done, and I still couldn't think of a way to keep one measly person from dying. If only I _could _make miracles...

"Suzu."

I blinked and turned, putting my foot back down. Minato was standing there in full gear, now-usual look of concern etched on his features.

"Are you okay?" he asked. I felt my expression flatten a bit.

"Fine." I made an effort not to glare. I was seriously going to smack the next person to ask me that. "Why?"

Minato lifted a hand, index finger pointed outward. I followed its trajectory up the sky, where a hawk was circling in a familiar pattern, letting out a periodic screech—Team 7's call signal.

"I sent a bird out twenty minutes ago, and everyone gathered but you," he said. "What happened? It's not like you to miss something like that."

I felt the blood drain from my face. I hadn't noticed it at all.

"Shit, I'm sorry," I said astoundedly, putting a hand to my forehead. "I don't know what... I mean, I didn't..."

"We'll talk about it later." Minato took out a sealing scroll and tossed it to me. "For now, though, we can't afford to waste any more time. I got your stuff, so let's go."

I was pale-faced with horror the whole run to the gates, where Kakashi, Rin, and a half dozen other ninja were waiting. The sight of it made me want to crawl into a hole and never come out; I had held up _two and a half platoons_ of ninja.

Forget getting flagged for a psychotic break, I was going to get _court-martialed_ for this. Dereliction of duty during wartime… psychosis was the least of my problems now.

"Where the hell have you been?" Kakashi immediately rounded on me. Too mortified to even speak, I just sunk into the lowest, most apologetic bow I could make, and stayed there.

"Leave it, Kakashi," Minato held up a hand. "I'll deal with her after the mission's over. Right now we need to focus. Let's move."

Everyone was off tree-hopping before I had time to blink. Rin quickly made her way to my side and brought me up to speed: Team 7, one of the few remaining units with a jounin pair, had been selected to lead a special task force behind Iwa lines to strike what the village hoped to be one of the final blows against the Hidden Rock. Under their joint command, we were supposed to attack one of their bases at a village on the Iwa-Kusa border. It was one of the strongholds preventing our forces from advancing into Earth Country territory and was a crucial point if we were to finally end the Third Shinobi World War.

Not for the first time, I found myself wondering what business a pair of thirteen-year-olds had with these soldiers, let alone an eleven-year-old. I was way out of my depth. What was I even trying to do here, clinging to the sides of these people, trying to stand as their equal? I was young and inexperienced, of an average talent, and frankly, a deadweight. How could I be expected to try and help end a war when I couldn't manage my own life? I was coming apart at the seams. Constantly ruminating, twitching with anxiety, lashing out at friends and family and neglecting my responsibilities… if I couldn't handle the stress of one person, how could I be trusted with an entire village? Itsuki had told me when we'd first met that the village was everyone's responsibility, but it was plain to see I wasn't up to the task.

Before I could help it, tears began to blur my vision. A tiny, pathetic little hiccup escaped my throat; that hiccup became a gasp, and then that gasp became a sob.

All nine of my comrades turned to look at me over their shoulders. I bit down on my lip hard and tried to control myself, but only succeeded in producing a strangled whimper; it came out sounding far too hysterical for my liking.

The look Kakashi gave me was one of abject disgust. For a brief moment my breakdown was interrupted by the thought that, for a guy who had recently had the lesson of respect for comrades smashed into his face, he still had the Shinobi Code stuck way up his ass.

"I'm fine," I gasped when Minato made to fall back to my pace. He fixed me with the face that said _I'm tired of your bullshit_.

"You are not," he contradicted in his commander's voice.

"I'm _fine!_" I very nearly screamed, barely managing to keep my voice down to a choked shout. "_Don't shame me any more!"_

And suddenly I came to a conclusion that I had been trying to avoid for months: I was ashamed of myself. Of my weakness, my inadequacy, my incompetence, my lack of discipline. My _unworthiness_. What had I done in my life that I was proud of? What was there _good _about me? Academy grades? A promotion? All of my accomplishments were so petty. Compared to deceiving my family, fighting with my friends, and failing to protect the people who mattered, they made me nothing. No, worse than nothing.

They made me _trash_.

Taken aback, Minato regarded me with a look that would have been shocked, had he not been in mission mode. For a moment, it looked like he was still going to come over, but after an eternity of a second he turned back to face the front.

(That was very Minato—if there was anything he respected, it was personal space. That was why, even when it was obvious I was sinking fast, he would look away. He always honored autonomy.)

We continued on in silence, my chest heaving with bitter tears the whole way.

* * *

The strategy was simple: one squad distracts, the other attacks. We formed two groups; Minato, who was an army all on his own, elected to lead a three-man-cell rather than evenly splitting our men. Kakashi was to head the main attack force while our sensei went out to scare the enemy ninja with his infamous flee-on-sight order.

For me, the battle was over as soon as it began. The entire fight was a blur; it was as if an entirely different person was controlling my body, slapping seals down and pulling limbs off. A mass of wire strings spun up around me, slicing through everything, turning the air a faint pink with their bloody tint. It was too easy: dodge, block, decapitate. Rinse and repeat.

I must've killed a hundred shinobi that day, but I don't remember half of it. When I came to and found myself standing in a sea of shredded Iwa ninja, utterly incapable of figuring out they'd gotten there, I learned one of the worst lessons in my life. It was far more horrifying than knowing that even little boys die, or that it's kill or be killed, or that even sometimes friends will turn around and betray you.

It was knowing that you must carry every life you ever take on your back for all of eternity. It is knowing that once you bloody your hands you will never be clean again. It is knowing that you are a _murderer_. Holding that within yourself, having learned from experience…

The lesson of killing was, by far, the most repulsively awful thing I have ever, ever come to know.

"Suzu," Rin murmured weakly, palm laid over her heart. Even Kakashi seemed a bit dumbstruck as he lowered the kunai in his hand. I looked down and saw the lower half of someone's torso.

A trembling hand came up to cover my mouth. Its fingers were painted a crimson red.

Oh, my God.

* * *

"It's insane. She shouldn't be on active duty. She needs a Yamanaka."

"We need to tell Minato-san to file a report..."

"Make sure you keep your distance if you don't want to end up being the one to put her down when she snaps. It's always worse when it's a kid."

I opened my eyes with a groan, feeling stiff and shitty. Quiet mmediately fell over the camp; the other ninja quickly jerked their gazes away when I mustered the strength to lift my head and look at them.

"You're up," Rin said with a smile of forced levity, getting up from her spot beside Kakashi. "That's good. Suddenly passing out like that… we were worried."

The expression on the collective faces of our team did indeed portray anxiety, but it was all too obvious that that concern was not for me. I groaned again and let my head fall back, putting an arm over my eyes.

God, please help me.

Rin came over and knelt at my side; the sensation of medical chakra sweeping over my head was by now a familiar feeling. I just laid here and let her run diagnostics.

"Minato-sensei and the others have been delayed by a squad of Iwa ANBU," she informed quietly, determined to try and fill the crushing silence. "He sent a summon to say they're not in danger, but regrouping is going to be difficult. Since we've made it back behind our lines, we've been told to stand by until they find a way back to us."

A long moment of silence.

"...Here's your belt pouch," she tried. I lifted my arm long enough to see her pull out my supply bag and offer it to me with her free hand.

"Thanks," I finally managed to say after a full minute of blank staring. I took it and flicked it open to check its contents; when a photograph fell out, I immediately regretted it.

Team 11 had lacked a jounin-sensei, so there were only three people in it. They were from another world, that trio, with their big smiles and laughing eyes. Akihiko was in the center—he was always the center—and Yoshiya and I were at his sides, grinning at the camera, unsullied by the war. Akihiko's eyes still held childish glee, and my arm looked almost naked without any covering on it. Only Yoshiya looked the same; death had stopped his clock before he'd had a chance to change. He would remain a smiling nine-year-old boy.

For thousandth time since I became a ninja, I felt my heart break.

"Are you okay?" Rin asked quietly, withdrawing her hand and letting the chakra fade. I looked up from the picture, feeling my lips part automatically. Fine, I felt the words on my tongue. I'm fine, don't worry, don't bother yourself. Everything's alright.

But then I shut my mouth and turned away, pulling a blanket over my head. I was tired of lying.

Rin left me alone after that.

* * *

Time passed. We waited for Minato.

I came to the vague realization that I wanted to kill myself.

* * *

**A/N: Short chapter again. Though to be honest, considering the content of this one, I think it's better for it to stand on its own.**

**It was really emotionally draining to write this chapter, by the way. I know that most good writers try to separate themselves from their characters, but this _is _a semi-self-insert, and let me tell you, this was actually really unsettling.**

**...dang, this story has gotten gloomy.**

**Anyway, thanks for your patience. The next chapter will probably take a while in its coming too, but rest assured that I'm still here, and I'm still writing.**

**Cheers,**

**Eiruiel**


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